It’s so funny, but it’s taken me 3 children to really feel like I know how to teach a child to read. It’s really not that hard, but I didn’t quite do it right the first two times.

Child #1 I overtaught. I read to her for hours a day, since she was my first for a while. And when I taught her to read, I used a boxed program. Well, I overtaught her. I didn’t realize this until it was summertime and her 8 yo cousin showed her some books and her reading took off. At that point, I had only covered long vowel sounds with her. I was planning on doing blends next. We never did get to those blends.

Child #2 I undertaught. I made the assumption that all I had to do was teach him the same way I taught her. It didn’t work. I should have tried Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with him, because the traditional route did not work well with him. So, eventually, his reading finally took off when he started reading the bible with his father at night.

Child #3 is doing great. I started with 100 Easy Lessons up to about lesson 70. At that we switched to The Original Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. That was okay, but way too detailed and broken down for me. So I went through my materials and found some beginning readers that I really liked. They were by Christian Liberty Press. We went through all 4 of those books, and his reading was great. We just read through them, one page at a time.

After that, I came across the Webster’s speller, and we began covering the syllables. From there his confidence has just grown leaps and bounds. He is now working on decoding 2 syllable words. And we are just simply reading through the tables. After 2 syllable words, then 3.

He is having so much fun reading. He feels like a big kid. He reads everyday for fun. And he is even reading to his 3 yo little brother.

It was so cute yesterday when I caught the two of them reading. The 5 year old (6 next week) reads the page and the 3 year old narrates it back to him. It was so encouraging to see them practicing, on their own, what I have been trying to do with them for the past few months.

I can’t say I am very consistent. In fact, I can only handle focusing on one subject intensely at a time. So since January, the intense focus for my 5 year old has been reading. Before that it was manuscript writing. This summer the whole family will be focusing on Spanish. But while we have one area of intense focus, we do keep plodding along in math and the other subjects, just not with the same intensity. They’re scheduled and we do it. And not every child has the same intense focus.

For my 10 yo daughter, it’s outlining. For my 9 yo son, it’s reading. And for my 5 yo it’s reading as well. Spanish for everyone during the summer and in the fall, it will all switch again. Probably Latin for the older two. Math for the younger tw

I’m a perfectionist to the point of being paralyzed. It’s only during my middle thirty’s that I began to realize that perfection isn’t necessary in every situation and that it’s okay to do just good enough. It’s okay to fail.

Knowing this about myself makes life a lot easier. I can attack my housework knowing it’s okay to just do rather than having to do it perfectly. In fact, I coined the phrase “people perfect” with my own children.

When my kids were little, I stressed that we do things “people perfect” because only God is truly perfect.

When I read curriculum that stresses doing things perfectly the way Charlotte Mason does, my heart races, my jaw clinches, and my stomach knots up. It really stresses me.

I cannot fully embrace Charlotte Mason’s methods because of this.

And while I dont like the “doing what a child can do perfectly” I really love narration because the child doesn’t have to be perfect.

Charlotte Mason’s methods are complicated. I’ve learned to take what I like and leave the rest.

Actually, I wish I could embrace the idea of perfection because it is what I aspire to be, but it is that same idea that prevents me from being my best. I cannot see burdening a child with the burden of having to be perfect.

The dark side of my avoidance of perfection is that I risk teaching my students to not try their best.

That is why co-op has been so good for me. I typically have high expectations but I have to put aside my own fears and still require the attempt at perfection from my students (co-op and home).

It’s such a fine line to balance between doing your best and trying to obtain the unattainable. Because of my tendencies, I have to err on the side of good enough rather than perfect.

For a perfectionist though, good enough is often not good enough.

By the way, I don’t think Ms. Mason was trying to burden everyone with perfectionism. I just think that for those who suffer with this tendency, the wording used by Ms. Mason and by those that interpret her work must be taken with a grain of salt or a handful. I have to know who I am as a teacher and, just as importantly, who my students are as people. No program is perfect for everyone and should be adjusted for each student according to his or her needs. By and large, Charlotte Mason’s methods are beneficial to students everywhere. The student just must be the focus of the teaching and not the method–whether it’s Charlotte Mason’s methods or classical or any other method.

Obviously, I was in a hurry. But a few posts earlier, I wrote up the grading rubric that I’m using with my students at co-op.

Before implementing this scale, all of the elements addressed were taught. And the students received grades for their work, but over time I noticed that there wasn’t much improvement on the part of half of my class of students.

Now, I am getting emails from some parents that want to thank me for the improvements they see in their children’s papers. I wish I could say that I was receiving this type of feedback from everyone, but that simply wouldn’t be true.

About half of my students aren’t progressing as much as I would have liked them too. They are improving, but they keep reverting to the same mistakes over and over.

So, I decided to purposely give lower grades to all of the students for rough drafts. The drafts are checked by me for the elements I listed in the previous post. After they receive their initial grade, I give them their papers back to revise and edit. After the edits are complete, they turn in both papers. (I have had a couple of papers turned in to me twice with no revisions. To eliminate this temptation, they have to turn in the first draft and the revised paper.)

The second time around, I regrade the paper and when the edits are complete, they get at least a 10 point increase. I’m not sure how much I want to give them an increase, because I’m sure that some “thinking” child will throw together an awful paper over a one hour time period and let me edit to my heart’s content, with the hope that I will point out all of his or her mistakes for him or her and thereby eliminate the need to self-edit.

So I’m thinking a ten point increase for edits, with an option for extra credit for the extremely hard worker.

I came across a blog somewhere with a pretty profound thought. He said, and I paraphrase,

–Children will learn what is needed for testing–

Yes, I think that all of us do this in areas that aren’t our passion. So I’m trying to teach to the reluctant writer, the student that doesn’t want to put pen to paper. And I’ve got to think of all the ways he is going to try and get out of it.

See, this is one of those issues that is different between co-op and home. At home, there is no easy way out. My kids do it my way, because I’m involved with every step of the process. At co-op, I’m having to learn how to be involved in as many steps as possible, without being there.

It’s tough, but it’s worth it.

Not the same. It is so much harder to teach a classroom of children than it is to teach my own.

But teaching at co-op has been so good for me. I’ve learned to look further down the road to graduation. I’ve learned to be a stricter teacher and disciplinarian. And I’ve learned more about children and education in general.

It’s so easy to think that my kids are like kids everywhere or that kids everywhere are pretty much the same. Not true. Not true at all.

At co-op I have to try and meet children where they are. And they come from homes where the rules are different and the expectations are different.

What I take for granted in my kids, I realize now, is the result of the work that my husband and I have put into raising them. And my children’s weaknesses are also a result of that same training.

Because of co-op, I can see a little more clearly what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.

What we’re doing right?

My kids know how to think. We don’t spend as much time as I’d like discussing deep concepts, but we do talk a lot–everybody at my house is always talking–and we’re all so loud. My husband and I love debating and arguing and having deep meaningful conversations, and my kids are beginning to get involved in some of those conversations. Our current favorite topic is the economy and the demise of America as we know it.

After spending a couple of years at co-op, I see that many, many homeschooled students are excellent thinkers. Most of the highschool students that I teach are amazing in their ability to research, filter through information, and write up their opinion(s) about the topic. But not all of them are capable of doing this on the same level. There are a few whom I have encountered over the years that have unclear, muddled thinking. They don’t know how to narrow down ideas to the crux of the matter. (This is why I like The Lost Tools of Writing so much. It’s not muddled.)

What we’re doing wrong?

~sigh~ There’s so much I don’t know where to begin. I’m working on discipline, scheduling, habit training, and the list goes on. My kids are good kids, but I didn’t learn about Charlotte Mason’s methods until I was an adult, and I am the one that needs habit training. I am working on all of those above issues for me, and as I get better in these areas, my children improve in these same areas as well. They catch my habits.

So more than anything, co-op is helping me to be more organized and together by requiring me to be more organized and together. The end result is that my kids are becoming more organized and together.

The biggest drawback to attending co-op is the fear it causes in me. I fear that my kids will not get as good an education because the teachers are not teaching my children the way I would. (This is huge!)

In some instances, I know it’s right. But in others, I know that I have seen the co-op teachers doing a better job in some subjects than what I would have done. And my children are benefiting.

Our co-op is worth the risk. The ladies who run it are amazing and are gifted at what they’re doing. I’m really looking forward to what is happening at our co-op.

The plan now, which I can change at any moment, is for her to do Chalkdust prealgebra. Most of it will be review after Life of Fred Fractions and Decimals. But as a 6th grader next year, I don’t think she’s ready for algebra. And even if she were, I want to make sure she’s ready. But every now and then, I see that she doesn’t really understand something minor, or she forgets. This tells me she doesn’t really care because she’s not asking herself the question, does this make sense.

For instance, she got an answer right in Fred and assumed it was wrong for 15 minutes. She didn’t ask herself does this make sense. She just assumed. She does stuff like this a lot in math, but not in reading. So I know it’s a maturity issue.

She’s doing the video prealgebra so I can spend more one on one time with my 5 and 3 year olds next year. My son will stick with Sinapore 4B and 5A next year. After that, he’ll be going into Fred. Unless he prefers Singapore and wants to continue it through 6B. That’d be fine with me too.

Honestly, for my daughter, I can’t remember. But for my son, I’ve learned a few things.

A couple of years ago, his sentences were structured all crazy. He also narrated in such a way that he’d miss out on some important details. Sometimes he narrated in everyday common, informal words. I knew he wasn’t ready.

Now, he narrates in a such a way that the structure of his sentences sound just right. In fact they sound very, very good. He has varied sentence beginnings and he uses words properly and formally.

Now, he has to learn to condense the story down more. I’m trying to have him summarize the beginning, the middle, and the end. Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And every child can tell you what those are. And my 9 year old can tell me what those are too, but to identify what those are and to word those three parts with transitions so that they flow together, even though the details aren’t there, does take another level of skill. That’s what I’m working on with him.

My daughter is already there.

She has moved on to creating an outline from her summation. I’ll probably talk about that tomorrow.

Okay, I realize it’s not entirely problematic to adhere to a set lay out in any subject area. It’s absolutely beneficial to do it in math, for instance. But, from my personal experience, more often than not, a curriculum that is so laid out where it is planned to T in a skill subject can be detrimental and not beneficial to some children. The reason? Well, not all children are learning at the same rate as the schedule.

There is no strict rule that says that all first graders have to be able to read x number of words or at x level by the end of the school year. Those reading levels and such are just guides, and not everybody follows them.

After having 4 kids, I’ve finally come to understand this. My kids are so different. Why would I judge my 9 yo son’s reading ability compared to where his sister was when she was 9? He is a different person, he has different interest, and he has different eyes. He even has an eye tracking problem with one eye that can give him headaches and make reading in the car almost impossible.

And my daughter? She reads a book a day. She loves to read. But should every child read as much as she does? Absolutely not. She is not a super active child and has some problems with her feet. That slowed her down with walking and all other physical milestones. By being behind in some areas, she has gravitated toward what she loves.

When I use a curriculum, I try to tailor it to meet my child’s needs. For instance, if the math lessons are too redundant, we speed it up and skip some problems. If the math is too hard, I pull out a workbook that has more practice problems in the trouble area, and we park there for a while. I let each of my children dictate their pace of learning.

The only areas where I see there may not be a need to do this are in content areas. There is a lot of history and science information that can be learned. And I’ve learned to adjust what we’re doing for my daughter by giving her 5 books to read to my son’s 2 books to read. (My daughter is almost 11, son 9 1/2)

I like curricula that I call open-ended. Those that present my children with as much information as possible, and then allows them to spew out what they can. That is why I like narrations so much, no child fails at narrations.

For us this is really working. My daughter told me this weekend that the Trojans eventually got their revenge. When Aeneas escaped, his grand children eventually founded Rome. And Rome eventually defeated the Greeks.

She also came next to me yesterday, sat by me, and said, “You know, Hitler and Haman were a lot alike. They both wanted to destroy the Jews.” She had just finished reading about Persia in Ancient History and last year we studied modern history. Evidently, it’s all starting to come together for her.

Now if she were a few years older, I’d have her write a comparison contrast paper on Haman and Hitler. Shucks, I’d do it today if she knew how to outline well enough, do the research, and then write it. Problem is, she can probably write it, but she is still learning to outline, and she hasn’t done much research other just reading.

(Sorry for the grammar, the country in me started coming out)

Absolutely not. I didn’t believe it first, until I actually wrote Write from History.

First of all, Charlotte Mason made the program so easy. Copywork, narration, and dictation is really all that elementary students need. And you don’t need a writing curriculum to make it happen.

For copywork, select a sentence from literature that your student is reading. It can even be Frog and Toad. There are some really well written sentences in Frog and Toad. And they have months and seasons and all kinds of elements that children need to cover.

For narration, your student has to simply retell an experience that he or she has had. It doesn’t even have to be from a story. Practice first by having your child narrate his or her day. Have him narrate the adventure he had with his sister. He can even narrate a TV show. It helps him with recall, with putting his own ideas into his own words. It also helps him to practice speaking in one verb tense.

After your student has copied a sentence, try dictating it to him the next day. Or better yet, mix up the words and make a new sentence using words he already knows.

I made my Write from History books after I realized that I needed to have something organized for me that I didn’t have to think about. Plus I wanted it to be tied into our history lessons to help save us time.

But organized or not, any parent can teach an elementary student to write simply by using copywork, narration, and dictation. And it doesn’t have to follow a specific schedule or layout.

Just meet your student where he is and he’ll be fine. If your son can write two sentences, they have him write two. If he can do a paragraph easily in second grade, then have him do a paragraph. There is no magic schedule. The schedule should be set by where your student is, and with consistency he will learn to write well.

I’ve been teaching IEW for a couple of years now, specifically SWIC. And I’ve come to realize that the stylistic elements are really a great part of the program. Without them, my students tend to make all of their sentences sound the same.

But after working up to the 5 paragraph essay for these students (mostly 8th graders), I have decided to grade their papers based on the dress-ups, without requiring a specific number of the dress-ups. If all of their sentences begin the same, they’ll loose points.

Also, to help with getting the students to edit their papers, I’ve come up with the idea of giving purposefully low grades. In order for them to receive a better grade, one they feel they truly deserve, they have to make the edits I suggest, which often involve adding more details to their writing.

This seems to be working. Teaching in a co-op is difficult because I only see the students once a week. Not only that, but some parents are intimately involved whereas others aren’t involved at all.

It’s a cross between a classroom and a home school setting. But I think I’m finally developing a method of getting the students to rework their papers, without me or their parents having to constantly remind them. The low grade is the reminder.

All 4 of my kids are now taking piano lessons, and I’m so thrilled about it.

Children are so different. They have different skills, different talents, and different interests. My daughter, almost 11, dislikes the piano the most. But I am so very, very glad that we persevered and made her continue taking lessons.

In some movies there’s always one kid with glasses that reads a lot but cant make their bodies respond to physical stimuli, like catching a ball or riding a bike. In some cases, it’s a boy that tutors everyone else but has an F in wood shop. Well, that’s kind of my daughter.

Even though she dislikes the piano the most, she needs it the most. When I see her playing, using both hands, and pumping with her foot at the same time, while reading the notes, I know its helping her mind, her concentration, her hand-eye coordination, and her musical awareness.

She needs to play the piano. I’d go so far as to say that she has hated it for the first 3 years of practice. But it has been physical therapy to my daughter and a blessing to her. And, best of all, she actually enjoys playing, now. She doesn’t like to practice, but she does like playing.

My 3 sons, on the other hand are more naturals and they just plow their way through the piano. My oldest son tries to play his music backwards. They asked to start playing. My 3 year old begged me, “Pease, pease, can I pay the piano.”

I couldn’t say no.