I made a post about our family workbox plan back in May. We tried it for the end of
the last school year and then I implemented it more fully during the new school
year, which started two weeks ago. After two weeks I made some adjustments and
changed the previous post to reflect them.
First
of all, I started out with a daily schedule. I wanted to make sure that if we
took 20 min. per lesson, we could finish everything within a reasonable amount
of time. However, it quickly became apparent that packing up one workbox
and pulling out the next takes a few minutes which puts us off schedule. The result is I give each subject a time limit (about 20 min) which
should give us ample time to cover the material and a few moments to make the
workbox switch.
Secondly,
I have had to deal with a consistently bad attitude from my oldest. Here is how
it goes, nearly every day: "Aw, man! Math again? This is so stupid."
Then we get out the book and start the lesson: "Wow, this is awesome! I
love math." And so on through the other subjects of the day. It is like being on a roller coaster. My
second son is less dramatic. He is happy to do his school work... until he is
not, which is typical for a five year old. I
don't push him to do history with us if he has just done math, reading, Bible,
and Spanish with a smile. Now that's fun for a parent :-)
Finally,
the Simply Charlotte Mason booklet "Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education," encouraged
me to make a different plan for each term. We have four terms (nearly
year-round school) and I plan to keep our math the same all year but switch
most of the other subject materials to keep kids interested. For example, we'll study the
Middle Ages for history for three terms then switch to Georgia history for the
final quarter of the school year.
