Do Over

This is the sixth part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence, Part 2: Making the Grade, Part 3: Unscheduling, Part 4: Why DIY? and Part 5: Race to the Finish.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• A LOT less time spent explaining work and correcting (and re-correcting) work.

I want to say up front that what I'm comparing here isn't really, purely, textbooks vs. no textbooks.  What I'm comparing is the way we used to do math vs. the way we do math now.

Before:

"Math" every day was sitting with one kid at a time and explaining to him what to do on his math assignment.  It went something like this:

"See, they're showing you that in order to divide by a fraction, you just flip it upside down and then  multiply.  Does that make sense?  Here, try this one.  Exactly! Good!  Got the idea?  OK, so you are going to do these five problems about that.  And then how about if you do one of these ... and one of these ... one from each of these sections ... and a word problem and, sure you can do all the Roman numerals.  OK, go get your sister and tell her it's her turn."

So, basically, it was like math, minus all of the best parts of math.  There was no exploration.  No wonder.  No awe.  No lightbulb moments.  No connecting the concepts.  No conversation.  Like a Dementor had kissed our homeschool math.

Maybe we can get into all that some day, I'd tell myself.  Some day when I didn't have to spend 15-20 minutes x 4 kids just telling them what they had to do on their worksheet for the day.  Someday when I wasn't exhausted by all of the exertion of the "management" of six other people while I tried to spend an hour meeting with each of the least destructive ones individually.

And what about quiet work time in the afternoon?  It went something like this,

"Good, all of your Roman numerals are correct.  Oooh, sorry, your long division problem is wrong, so you'll have to do that over.  Stop grumbling; math is supposed to be challenging.  And, oh, wait.  Yikes!  You weren't supposed to flip BOTH of the fractions upside down.  Only the second one.  Oh dear.  I guess I didn't really explain that very well.  OK, maybe I can go over this with you tonight and you can do all these over tomorrow along with tomorrow's math."

Good fun, right??  Can you tell why the kids and I all dreaded math?

Now, all of the exploration of new concepts happens together in a group.  There is still some "people management" - there always will be - but usually the oldest four are engaged (they are either hands-on or answering with their dry erase "slates") and the younger two are coloring, which is their version of "doing math".  And quiet work time?  Sure, they still get problems wrong.  And there are still corrections to be made.  But not as many because:

1. They are only doing review work - not work on new concepts.
2. There are only five problems.
3. There is only one problem per topic, so no more discovering that they've done eight problems in a row wrong because they didn't understand one concept.

I've gotten some questions about what "family math" looks like these days.  I promise to write a post on that when I'm finished with this series (almost done!) but I have to say up front: we've been doing this less than two months!  I can tell you what it looks like so far, though, for what it's worth.

Race to the Finish

This is the fifth part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence, Part 2: Making the Grade, Part 3: Unscheduling and Part 4: Why DIY?.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• I'm not bound up by a need to "finish" a purchased curriculum,  or "get  my money's worth"; no need to weed through and pick out which parts of a lesson to do.

Yes, I have hang-ups.  Yes, I have first-born perfectionist tendencies (though you wouldn't know it to look at my house!).  Yes, it somewhat bothers me to purchase something and then leave it incomplete (more on that in a moment).  But that's not really the pivotal factor in this benefit for us.

We all want to make sure we cover our bases in teaching our kids any subject, but especially one as central (in our world, at least) and developmentally sequential as math.  How does one make sure she covers all the stuff she's "supposed" to cover?  Well, the simplest way to achieve that is to let someone else (usually someone who has a lot more background in the subject) do the research and planning.  You purchase a textbook.  When you've covered all the things in that book, then you move on to the next one.

Sure, you can take a textbook and pull it apart and mix it all up and use it differently.  But unless you are committed to finishing everything in that book, you need some other system for keeping track of what has been covered and/or criteria for deciding what should be covered and what should be omitted or saved for later.

As I mentioned above, it does somewhat bother me that we've got these half-used textbooks on the shelf.  But I got myself into that situation on purpose.  I wanted to experiment ... but I wanted to experiment with a safety net.  I figured that if we tried this system for a couple of months and it didn't work, we'd just pick up our textbooks again.  I also figured that I wanted a few months to test the theory before convention came around (for us that's June) and I needed to decide whether or not to purchase new textbooks for next year.

At this point, I am so enjoying what we've been doing here that I don't see myself wanting to go back to the textbooks.  In fact, I've been letting the kids use up the pages doing "school" with each other in their free time.  I thought that perhaps they would come in handy in case I was in a pinch and I needed something quick to pull out and give the kids to do.  Here's why that hasn't been an inviting option (yet):

• There are tons of problems on a page.  Deciding what to have the kids do takes some work in and of itself.
• If I'm there and I don't have 5-A-Days prepared, I can just put some problems up on the whiteboard, everyone can do them on their dry erase "slates" and we're done.  (If I really want to, I can even open up the spreadsheet and track as we go.)
• For days when I am going to be out (such as to appointments with the orthopaedist!) there have been so many things I've wanted the kids to have more time to do that it isn't a problem to leave them with other activities, like snuggle number!

So, in summary, the real benefit behind not having to "finish" a textbook stems from the fact that we've un-linked progress tracking from textbook scope and sequence.  We keep track of what we've learned, mastered and practiced elsewhere, so we are free to use or not use whatever we want from the textbook - and many other sources as well!

Unscheduling

This is the third part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence and Part 2: Making the Grade.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• I can school without the parameters of a "school year" or a "work week".

Textbooks are designed to be used by schools and to meet the needs of a school schedule. And so they should be; this is not a criticism.  They generally plan for students to have 32-36 weeks of lessons and to complete lessons five days a week.  They intersperse new material and review material to round out the appropriate amount of assignments needed.  But couldn't a family use a textbook and still choose their own schedule?  Absolutely.  Here are some of the ways I've adapted our various subjects to fit with our own schedule.

• Our on-line History program has 32 topics with 5 "lessons" per topic (4 lessons and a test).  We do the test along with the fourth lesson so that we have four days of history instead of five per week.
• Our Latin textbook has 32 chapters of material, but interspersed along the way are review chapters.  Sometimes we skip the review chapters or sprinkle the review material in with other chapters.  Also, we often don't have a chance to complete all of the activities per chapter since we don't school 5 days a week.
• Our Math textbooks contain 170 lessons each.  In some grade levels, the textbook authors expect you to have a test (in a book you purchase separately) either every 5 or every 10 lessons (presumably every Friday or every other Friday).  I've never used the test materials and we've been skipping over those lessons that are only review with no new material presented.

So yes, you can use textbooks and make them work on most any schedule.  In other words, if I were trying to compile an objective list of reasons why one ought not to use textbooks, this one wouldn't really fit.  And even in a list of my own personal cost/benefit analysis, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was a secondary benefit rather than a driving cause.

See, in my imagination, our school culture would look something like this.  We would be a home where learning was part of the normal activity of the household.  We would study a variety of topics and read a variety of things.  We would wholeheartedly engage with what was in front of us, explore further if we wanted to, read extra, do some more problem solving or spend another day on it if needed.  And, when we had a need or an opportunity for a break, we would take it.  And when we had refreshed ourselves through a break, we would get back to the business of learning whatever was next.

And yes, this is doable with a textbook.  But when (for other reasons as well) we moved to going without the math textbooks, a wonderful benefit was realized in terms of the increased freedom to break when we need to and begin again when we are ready (which, at this point, has mostly included sick-days and broken arms!).  Perhaps, in the final analysis, this "benefit" speaks more to my own personal hang-ups over loose-ends and tidy finishes than to any objective characteristics of textbooks.  But if what we're doing is an individual cost/benefit analysis, personal hang-ups carry weight, too!

Scoping Out the Sequence

Back here I gave a rough outline of my cost/benefit analysis of going without textbooks (at least in math).  Since I've gotten some questions about the the reason behind them, I'd like to do a brief post expanding on each of the items I mentioned as "pros" for us.

• I'm not constrained to a particular scope and sequence (order of topics) and can order them based on learning opportunities, whole-family instruction and the developmental abilities of each child.

I want to stress (again) that there isn't anything wrong with purchasing curriculum with a scope and sequence or following one.  As mothers, our resources are limited.  It is not a cop-out to choose materials that take some of the work off of our plates!  However, at this point in the life of our family, the scope and sequence in our textbooks felt more like a restraint than a help.

As I looked through the children's textbooks (grades 6, 5, 3 and 1), I realized that there was a great deal of overlap in topics - at varying degrees of complexity, but related to the same general ideas.  However, these topics were not presented in the same order in each grade.  My first impulse was to tear all of the pages out of each of the (consumable) books, rearrange them by topic and use binder clips to clip together all of the pages that fell under the same general concept.  The problem with that idea was that since I'd be teaching the topics out of order (according to each individual textbook) and since an Abeka math page is about 25-40% work on the current topic and 60-75% review, the children would potentially be assigned "review" problems for concepts they had not yet learned.

Sure, I could create a system for keeping track of what each kid had already learned and then assign or skip over review problems accordingly.  But if I am going to keep track of those details and have that close of a handle on who needs to review what, the limited options offered on each math page actually become more of a restraint than a boon.  More on this when we talk about ...

• I get to create the lessons and activities myself.

A Very Simple Schedule

At the beginning of the week, I felt a moment of crisis because I knew that I needed to spend more one-on-one time with my new reader and my struggling reader.  The schedule already felt packed and scary and the thought of adding one more thing was daunting (to put it mildly).  Monday evening, I attended Part 2 of the Focus and Align class at the Read Aloud Revival and the beginnings of some ideas began to percolate.  We had two hard, rough days, followed by two good, smooth encouraging days, followed by one more hard, low, rough day (as viewed from my internal perspective, only).  And here, in retrospect, is what I think has settled out to be our new schedule*:

• Breakfast (sometimes while listening to a recorded book or story)
• Morning Chores, Joseph (1) to nap
• Read the Bible
• Talk about Math
• Talk about Language
• Meet one-on-one with Luke (10) and Robyn (6) to practice reading skills
  Emma (9) and Ruth (8) take turns doing things with Henry (4) and Hazel (3)
• Lunch
• Quick Straightening, Hazel (3) and Joseph (1) to naps
• Quiet Work Time (Math 5-A-Days, Latin and some silent reading)
  On Tuesdays this is replaced by "Latin Class" with another family
• Play Outside
• Final Clean-up
• History (on-line course the kids do as a group) while Mama fixes dinner

That's it.  That is all we can do in a day.  And some days we don't accomplish all of that.  If you look closely, you'll probably notice things that aren't included.  I bet your list wouldn't be even a third of the things that are on my mind.  But I'm setting that aside for right now.  Let tomorrow worry about itself.  This is what we can do right now.

* We do school Monday-Thursday.  Fridays are for laundry, housework and maybe projects.

Beginnings of a Beginning

These ideas still need time to percolate, but before I headed to bed I wanted to jot down some of the helpful bits of wisdom I've gleaned at tonight's class that I think will move us in the right direction.

1. Make a schedule "for now" not "for forever".  The schedule can be revisited again later.  Not including it in the schedule now doesn't mean not including it in the schedule ever.  Still hard to see some things sit out.  But it's time to face reality.
   
2. You don't need to study all subjects every day.  You don't need to study all subjects all year.  Sarah breaks her year into "terms" (six weeks of school followed by a one-week break).  She only plans for one "term" at a time because it takes the pressure off.  I like that idea a lot.
   
3. 30-45 minutes one-on-one time with each school-aged kid.  Sarah has a neat way of scheduling this ... but she also has three bigger kids (the youngest of whom is as old as my oldest child) and only three who are school-aged and need to meet with her.  Worth looking into, though.
   
4. Looping.  This isn't something Sarah spent a lot of time talking about tonight, but she covers it in her book.  I've been meaning to write a whole post on it at some point.  The basic idea is that instead of scheduling things on a particular day of the week, you schedule them in a loop.  When you come to that slot of the day, you just do the next one in your loop.
   
5. The Six-Minute Journal.  The last page of the handout from the Focus & Align class was a journal page to give time for reflection each day.  It includes these prompts:
   
   
   Each Morning Before School:
   
   
   1. Three things I am grateful for ...
   
   
   2. One way we'll live our Rule of Six today ...
   
   
   3. One way I'll practice my Words to Live By [words that describe how you'd like your children to look back and remember their homeschool childhoods] today  ...
   
   
   Each Night Before Bed:
   
   
   1. A win from today:
   
   
   2. Noticing each of my children [lots of white space after this one]:
   
   
   3. Tomorrow I will ...
   
   Looking forward to using these prompts to reflect on some in the days to come.  And even now, thinking about a "win" from today reminds me that on the ugliest days, all is not lost.

This was a hard, rough day.  I won't burden you with a long play-by-play, but let's just say that Daddy came downstairs (thankfully he was working from home due to snow) at lunchtime and found me crying on the sofa, where I had been tucked in by a three year old who was telling me (her own, spontaneously created) Curious George stories and letting me hold her stuffed cat.  And yet, even on a day when I look back and see a landscape littered with the gray, twisted mess of emotional train-wreckage, even on this day, I see things that can fit into the category of "a win from today".  Starting with the Curious George stories and the stuffed cat.