We are done!

Ok, that sounds so final. Let me qualify that. We are officially done with 5^th grade. My daughter has been doing 6^th grade science for a while now, because, of course, it is her very favorite subject, and she wouldn’t do anything else if I didn’t insist on a little math, and a little language arts, reading, logic, foreign language, art, music…you know, everything else!

And, naturally, my daughter is very legalistic, so even though she has been doing 6^th grade level work in some subjects, like science, she could not stand for me to tell people she was in 6^th grade.

“But Mamaaaa…”, she would stage whisper, “I’m still doing 5^th grade language arts!!!”

It gets very confusing for people who ask her what grade she is in, because she feels the need to tell them exactly what grade she is doing in each subject.

So, now, legally, literally, figuratively, and in any other way you can think of, as of Thursday of this week, she can honestly tell people, without any misguidance or smoke screens, that she is in 6^th grade. Yippee!!

What does that mean for us really? Well, because she put off her home school language arts until the bitter end, we have had to focus on it really hard for the last couple of weeks, in an effort for her to complete the course. So now, she is tired of language arts and doesn’t want to see it again for weeks, if ever!! Because we were focusing so hard on language arts, I had to curtail the amount of science and social studies she did. So, she feels deprived of her two favorite courses of study, and only wants to do them. And amid all of this, math has become the forgotten subject. I plan to ease her back into math every day using a couple of math games, just to jog her memory and remind her that it can be fun.

Seems like a lot of imbalance going on in her schooling right now, and my goal between now and Thanksgiving is to try to bring a little balance back into how much work she does in each subject. Every year we seem to get into this state of imbalance between where she is in science and where she is in language arts. I would love to use science as a reward for math and language arts getting done, but she loves science so much it seems unfair to put off science in favor of her least favorite subjects.

Has any one else run into this problem? How do you keep things in balance? I’d love to hear comments on this.

In the mean time, my daughter is OFFICIALLY a 6^th grader!!!!!!! Woohoo!!!!

I know, I shouldn’t be frustrated because my child doesn’t know something. That is the entire point of her going to school, is it not? If she knew everything, then there would be no point to her doing lessons. I’m going to take a deep breath and try to keep this in mind.

What is the latest problem? (Not really a problem…) My daughter wrote a paragraph, and in that paragraph, she made two spelling errors. I thought we were past those spelling errors. The words were actually very simple, and I know we have had these words. The words were “knot” and “their”. Here is the deal, she didn’t actually spell the words wrong, she just used the incorrect spelling for the meaning. Sound-alike words or homophones tend to be words that are not caught on spell checkers, generally, but the spelling of the words and the meanings associated with the spellings can be a place where students get confused. My daughter meant to use knot instead of not. And she meant to use their, but she spelled it there. I went out and checked, and for fifth and sixth graders there are many words that are on the list of homophones.

Here is another situation we ran into in a different paper. Capitonyms. Capito-whats you ask? I know, I had never heard of them either. Capitonyms are words that are spelled the same, but differ in meaning, depending on whether or not the word is capitalized. The classic example of this is Turkey and turkey, one is the country and the other is the creature we normally eat for Thanksgiving. Again, capitonyms are not found by spell checkers.

Here I thought we were making progress on spelling, and in the same month, I find two areas where we are going to have to step back and practice. And it reminds me that spell checker is not flawless. This situation reminds me that I need to hand grade her writing.  So, consider brushing up on the rules and examples of homophones, homonyms, and similar language arts issues, so that when your child runs into them you will be able to help her navigate that road.

My local school will begin the 2011-12 school year next week. While this doesn’t really effect my home school, it does increase my level of stress a little bit. We took an unforeseen break in June and July as far as school was concerned. Family issues required much of my time, and school was the thing that suffered for six weeks. We aren’t behind. Because we home school all year long, we have a cushion built in to our schedule. What I did lose by taking the unforeseen break was the extra time I had built in to help improve my daughter’s ability to take standardized tests. She is an excellent reader, scoring well above grade level, so that is not a problem. Her vocabulary is above level. So why am I concerned? Because is the year my daughter will need to take several standardized tests. We hope to move to a different state by this time next year, and I will have to have scores to present to the new state, even though we plan to continue home schooling.

There are three aspects of standardized tests that concern me with regards to my daughter’s ability to score well. She does not do well with analogies for some reason. She is a very literal thinker. Because of her literal thinking, analogies and metaphors just seem to be hard for her to understand and utilize in her language. Unfortunately, analogies are a staple for standardized tests. The way we are going to approach learning analogies is to simply do lots and lots of practice. That translates to lots of time practicing.

Another aspect of standardized tests that we are going to have to work on is my daughter’s writing ability. Even though I have a degree in English, and I write for a living, I find that I do not teach writing as well as I would like. Part of it is my impatience with my daughter’s unwillingness to actually write. I find it frustrating for her to be able to dictate a great paragraph, but not be able to actually write it herself. As far as standardized tests are concerned, this simply will not work. I actually think my impatience is detrimental to her improving in this area. I’m considering enrolling her in an outside writing course. Perhaps a different teacher will be more successful in teaching my daughter to write.

The last thing we are going to have to face is not really a language arts issue, but an overall issue. She can’t stand to be timed on anything, and any pressure put on her to get her to work within a limited time frame simply paralyzes her. She will not be able to do well on standardized tests, no matter how much knowledge she has in her head, if the test giver starts a set of instructions with, “You will have 30 minutes to complete this section.” I’ve got to figure out a way to help my daughter with this issue. I’m going to be doing some research on this area in the next month or so. Should I come up with a solution or suggestions on this issue, I will certainly pass the information on to those reading here.

I just wanted to add that it would be great if anyone had suggestions to help with these issues, or experience similar problems in their own home schools that they were willing to share through comments. All in all, I have to remember to stay flexible, and work harder when it is necessary, and work smarter when we can.

Do you have a reluctant writer? I’m not talking about penmanship here but about actually writing of paragraphs, reports, journals, and things like that. I have a very reluctant writer. My daughter does not like to write anything. She does not like to put pen to paper for any reason. We think that part of her problem may be something related to dysgraphia, where the actual mechanics of writing is painful for her. Her reluctance to write seems to point that direction, as does her terrible handwriting, and the amount of complains I get when I ask her to write. The problem with that line of reasoning is that she draws all of the time. And draws pretty well, so the idea that having a writing implement in her hand and putting it to paper is painful or difficult just doesn’t fit. The thing is that, as a fifth grader, soon to be sixth grader, I need her to write. She should be able to write a five paragraph research paper, basic book reports should be a breeze. Yet, we are still struggling with writing. One of the things that is so frustrating about the problems we are having with writing is that she does very well with her language arts curriculum as a whole. She does not have a problem reading, grammar seems to be easy for her, and she has an impressive vocabulary.

I started narrowing down some of her problem with writing early on. She seems to have a hard time with spelling. The odd thing about this is that she can tell if a word is misspelled if she sees it in print, but twenty minutes later, if I ask her to spell the word that she can recognize as incorrect, she is not able to do it, no matter how many times or ways we review the correct spelling.

I have researched on the internet for ways to help my daughter get a handle on writing. I have spoken to the other mothers in our local home schooling group. Several of them have children who have terrible learning disabilities, and thought that perhaps she has a form of dyslexia. I don’t believe that is the case. Another mom suggested that I have my daughter do mandatory copy work to improve her mechanical writing speed and neatness. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud, apparently she didn’t understand that mandatory, copy work, and my daughter should never grace the same sentence at the same time. The best idea I got from a very computer savvy mom was maybe I should let my daughter start a blog, someplace she could share her thoughts and feelings, and maybe her frustrations. This is an idea I might actually hold on to for a little bit, maybe combine it with the voice recognition software she is in the process of training.

We are trying to finish up fifth grade language arts, which is the main hold up to us going on to sixth grade. I have told her that until she can write at a reasonable level for a fifth grader, she cannot move on. Writing is just too important to let this difficulty with it continue to slow down her forward progress. In this particular conversation, I finally got out of her that she doesn’t mind writing, really, but she hates it that she can’t spell. Many tears and explanations later I came to understand that the fear of spelling words wrong has made her afraid to tackle writing at all.

So, what are we doing now? I had been letting her dictate, but recently I found a speech recognition program imbedded in my computer’s resident software. We got her a headphone with a boon microphone and she has begun the process of training the software. Once she gets the software trained, and she has worked through the tutorials, I believe that she will be able to write on fifth grade level without ever putting pen to paper, thanks to the magic of technology. Sometimes getting a reluctant writer to actually write is just a matter of the right motivation, whether that is letting them start a blog, or use speech recognition software to dictate their paragraphs into. I’m hoping we have found the tool that will help my daughter overcome her writing reluctance, only time will tell. Wish us luck!

I have come to the conclusion as of late that history, social studies, and political science are among the most important things I can teach my daughter. Numerous historians, politicians and philosophers have had their take on the saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history. Without getting political, I have come to the realization that it is vitally important that my child have some working knowledge of history. It is not just history, though. It is important that she understand political science. We live in one of the most unique political environments on the planet, indeed, in all of human history. Our system of government is unique as well. You do not have to like our system, or even agree with it to recognize that by its uniqueness, it deserves study. It is important to me that the social studies curriculum for my 5^th, soon to be 6^th grader teach her the things of the past, the current events, and also things like map skills. I tell you that it is a great thrill to hear your young child make a connection from something she learned in her social studies to something that is going on today. It makes you realize that your children are sponges, and that they are absorbing much of what you are presenting to them, even if you don’t think their test scores reflect that learning.

And this brings me to another thought. Sometimes I get caught up in the idea that we must study our curriculum, to the exclusion of everything else. As we near the end of a grade, I tend to get more bossy about covering our curriculum, and not adding extras, because I want us to finish. What this does, in effect, is limit the resources my daughter uses to learn, because she is not getting access to any other sources of information that she normally depends on. I know that it is wrong, but I am in a hurry. I have to be reminded that my daughter learns in many ways, not all of those ways are strictly by using her home schooling curriculum. She learns by using the internet, by using books, and magazines. She learns by means of programs on television, she learns by means of audio books. She learns by playing games. Is there any reason to think that an idea learned through her social studies curriculum is any more important than an idea learned through a social studies game? Of course not! In fact, wouldn’t learning about history through a kingdom building game give my child a better understanding of the dynamics involved in the rise and fall of empires? I guess the reminder here, to myself as well as others, is to remember that our children learn in many ways, and to limit the sources of information is to limit their education. I, for one, know that I never want to be accused of causing a limit on what my child can learn. What do you think?

?