This week CC#1 has completed her work except for science and French. I'm having her do school tomorrow as well to make up for that.
Next year we are going to do 6 weeks on and one week off schedule with an extra week off for Thanksgiving and two for Christmas. The extra week off will be counted somewhere along the year as needed. This will give us a 42 week a year schedule. The school years are still basically beginning at the end of August along with public school mostly because I have three kids with birthdays in summer and I correlate their levels of school with their birthdays.
We are also going to take a different approach to CC#1's school. Because of her ADHD she is far too easily distracted to get real book learning done. I have long known about the Robinson Curriculum and I have decided I will go ahead and purchase the information and adopt the self-instruction technique with her. I can truly see how crutches are very damaging to her abilities as well as the lack of perfectly rigid scheduling. As for her environment, she is currently doing her work at our big kitchen table in the dining room where the younger kids and I are coming in and out of all day long. We have a small house and providing her with her own school room is not an option. My husband and i have decided that putting her at a desk in our master bedroom will be the best option because she will have easy access to a bathroom and have a quiet solitary environment. I worry that she won't have enough light in there and that the dark green walls won't be conducive to her learning. It's the best we can do, so that's what we're going to do.
I'm going to make her new schedule and for the entirety of the year that is how we will proceed. I want our goals for the year to be adhered to for the entire year with very minimal adjustments.
In the Robinson Curriculum the plan is to have 5 hours of solitary focused study each day, six days a week (if you do it like they did.) The first two hours cover math followed by two hours of reading and one of writing.
This is going to be a huge stretch for CC#1 because she is such a talker and complainer. Putting her in a room by herself with just her work in front of her will be difficult at first, but I hope that with plenty of other activities to do during the other parts of the day, she will make it fine. I will let her have small breaks and snacks at first and gradually expect more focus of her.
I don't know that having her do two hours of math by herself at this level will be necessary, but if she takes a full two hours to do her pages, so be it. By the time she reaches Saxon 54 she'll be doing two hours of problems.
Now I just want to take a little time and complain about her gymnastics. When CC#1 was 4 I started her in gymnastics at Chow's in West Des Moines, the same place as Shawn Johnson's gym, incidentally. At that gym the kids went through every apparatus during each 45 min lesson and with 6-8 kids per class had very little wait time because of how the training was set up. At the current gym she is at, and it is the ONLY one in the area, things are done quite a bit differently.
I used to have her in an evening class and it was loud and noisy and the classes were run by young people who did not model all of the things they required in stretching properly and warming up. They didn't address my daughter's needs when she was hurt by another student in the class and ignored her. They do not go through even half of the apparatuses in each hour of class.
I switched her to the Homeschool class because I thought she would get better coaching. Then some teen girls joined the class and they "demoted" CC#1 to a 4 1/2 - 5 1/2 year olds class. I asked about them doing this and they said that CC#1 complains, gets bored and won't focus on a task enough to master it. I'm ticked because at Chow's the coaches said she was the best in her class.
They might be right about her, but I don't think moving her to the class they did is the answer.
I am iritated that the coach comes late to class, skips warm up stretches, never smiles, and then ends the class early to give the kids stamps on their feet. (If she wasn't doing what the coach requires she shouldn't be getting stamps. If all that's required is to show up then she shouldn't be going to that gym. Another thing that irritates me is that tons of the coaches bring in fast food and soft drinks. So much for being good examples! Taking her to another gym isn't an option so I feel stuck. I never intended for her to compete, but I am paying for her to learn skills and get some exercise.
As far as the gym goes for the other two kids nothing could be better. There are only a few kids in the class, the coach likes them and is nice.
