I know that I said in January that I was going to start blogging here again, but I have only done so once since then.

I have decided to suspend this blog at least until the fall.  If I am organized enough, I will resume posting here.  I would love to have a site as a record of what we are doing in school.  It will be great for me and the kids to be able to look back at it.  So, I am hoping that I schedule the time to do it.

The fall is going to be full of big, exciting changes for us.  Both of the older boys will be in middle school and our curriculum will be much more structured.  Also, Little E will be in first grade, so he will start doing formal school work, too.

We are also moving this summer, so we have a lot of big changes coming up.

Until then, you can always visit me at my blog All Things Hold Together.

I use a mish-mash curriculum.  I use different publishers for different subjects, based on what works for us.

Some of the things I consider are price, what I like, how the children learn, how I teach, and what will hold their attention best.  Not one of those factors is the deciding factor, though.  They work together to influence my decision.

For two years, I used Learning Language Arts Through Literature.  I love, love, love that curriculum.  And I bought the teacher’s books at eBay and the student books at Christian Book Distributors (see sidebar), so the price was right.  But the boys just did not like it.  It did not suit their learning styles and it did not hold their attention.

I blame them, not the curriculum.  In fact, I might try it with Little E, just to see if he likes it.

The point is that you cannot make a curriculum work if it doesn’t.  I finally gave in and found a language arts program that works.  Actually, it’s more of a system.  I use Spectrum Language Arts workbooks for grammar units, they choose books for their own reading practice, I choose books for literature studies (usually with a purchased literature study guide), and I use a spelling workbook for spelling reinforcement.

A similar situation happened with Math.  We started with Saxon, which is a terrific curriculum, but they didn’t quite like it.  Then we tried Switched-On Schoolhouse, a computer-based program, which just did not suit us.  Finally, this year, we tried Singapore Math, which was a resounding success.  We all love it.  It is an excellent math program.  It suits my teaching style to a T.  They love it, as it fits with their learning styles (both!).  I even started Little E on the kindergarten books.

As with pretty much everything else in homeschooling, finding the right curriculum is a trial and error process.  If you are struggling with homeschooling, you might want to try some different materials before you throw in the towel.

What about you?  What do you use for curriculum materials?  Did you go through trial and error, or did you get it right on the first try?

Hi.  Remember me?  I used to blog here.  I don’t know what happened, but I want to start doing it again.  So much has changed since the last time I posted.  Things are going much better.  I have so much to share.

I am just getting over a cold right now, but starting Monday, I am going to make the commitment to post here regularly.

Homeschooling is an uncharted adventure for each family.  Even though others have done it before, no one has ever homeschooled your family, or mine.  No one can tell us exactly how to do it, but we can gather all the information we can from others to help us on our journey to figure out what works best for us.

My goal for this site is to share what I have learned and learn from what you share with me.  I hope you will join me.

Ack! It’s been a month since I last posted here. My, how time flies!

I am not sure why I do not post very often over here. Maybe it is because it is just not part of my blogging routine yet. Maybe it is because I barely have enough time to post on my other blogs. Maybe it is because it is hard to blog about homeschooling when homeschooling is not going so well.

I am re-learning, or in many ways learning for the first time, that homeschooling a child with ADHD, or whatever label you give the D, is a challenge. Expectations and schedules are met with resistance daily. Things do not go as planned.

I know that to some extent, every parent can say that. When do things ever go as planned when children are involved?

That is not what I mean.

I have two other children, so I understand that even homeschooling “normal” children has its challenges.

This is different.

With the D, his ability to perform tasks changes from day-to-day, so I need to be somewhat flexible with my expectations. He still must do what is expected of him, regardless of what kind of day he is having, but my level of intervention varies greatly from day-to-day.

Some days, I can hand him some work to do and he will complete it with no problems.

Other days, he needs help figuring out where to start and what to do at each step. He has a hard time communicating. He can’t concentrate. He is very surly and mean. He has trouble writing. And all of these things compound the others.

Then, sometimes, his disruptive behavior puts Big E in a bad mood, too, not to mention me. Those are long days.

Today, the D wanted to play Game Cube. (I hate that thing.) He was completely obsessed with the idea. Obsessions are a little-known trait of ADHD children.

He asked me to give him all his work, so he could get it all done. But when I gave him the work, he was overwhelmed and did not know where to start.

At the same time, he was still obsessed with the Game Cube and knew that the longer the work took, the longer it would be until he could play. He became more frustrated at his sense of urgency that he get the work done.

Yet, he still did not know how to start and was overwhelmed with that.

Bear in mind, I knew none of this was going on inside his head and he was in no condition to tell me.

Commence name-calling, stomping, and trowing things.

I had no idea why he was reacting like this and he was still not communicative.

Fortunately, I am a fast learner (or slow, if you consider how long we have been going through days like this). Now that I understand better how his mind works, thanks to some fantastic ADHD books, I can often figure out what set him off and intervene.

It took a while, but I realized what was going on, he calmed down, and we worked out a new plan.

He didn’t get as much done as I had planned, but he didn’t destroy the house either. He also came up with his own pathway to getting his privileges back and cleaned up the mess he made.

Most importantly, I learned.

Every day that I learn something, the next days are better.

Today I learned,

• the Game Cube days (I only let them use it twice a week) need to be set in stone, so he does not wake up expecting to play.
• just because the D is asking for ALL of his work at once does not mean that he can do it all at once.
• I need to break things down into steps for him because he cannot do that for himself.
• it’s okay if we do not get everything done.

I already knew that last one, but it never hurts to remind myself.

Today, I am going to set the TV/computer/video game hours and make a sign. I am going to try for the rest of the week to stick to the plan and not budge, and see if it helps to have set hours that they cannot challenge. I am hoping this will help curb the obsession with game playing during “school” hours.

Tomorrow, I am going to tell the D what work he has to do, but then expect that I will need to walk him through how to tackle it step-by-step.

Every day is a learning experience. As I learn, and put into practice what I have learned, it does get easier.

I just forget sometimes, when I am talking with my articulate, bright 11-year-old son, that he sometimes just cannot do things that I think he can. He really does not function at an 11-year-old level sometimes.

There’s the rub, though; it is sometimes. Sometimes, he is fine. Other times, he is anything but fine.

I just need to be prepared each day to give him more help, if he needs it.

The more I learn about his cues that he is struggling, the more I can help him before he reaches the melting point.

And like everything with homeschooling, every day is a learning experience.

This year, I am going to be very organized with our schooling. I am going to do a full post on that evolution, but the short version is that The D, who has been recently diagnosed with ADHD, really needs more structure in order to deal with life.

Yesterday, I took all of my books that I am using this year for our core curriculum and input the assignments into Homeschool Tracker.

I have played around with Homeschool Tracker before, but I have never put a full year of assignments into it. I have to say, it was pretty awesome.

The software allows you to “copy” an assignment over a given date range. You can select which days of the week you want that assignment copied, which students it is for, and (optionally) what chapter or lesson you want to start from and what increment you want to increase by. It automatically excludes any dates you have pre-set in your calendar as holidays.

For example, if I plan to do a chapter of history every Tuesday and Thursday from September 1 through October 31, starting with chapter 3. It will automatically assign the next chapter for each Tuesday and Thursday. If one of the days is a holiday, it will skip over it.

Then I can print off an assignment list daily or weekly for each student.

I know for some, this sounds like overkill for a homeschool, but the D always wants a list of what we need to do for school work each day and now I will have it ready at my fingertips.

And I did all of this (and much more!) on the free version. It even works with Vista. (Ugh, yes, I have Vista on my laptop.)

The Meet the Students page is updated for this school year, with photos - finally!

As you can tell, I kind of took the summer off from this blog. There is something about the summer that makes it impossible for me to think about homeschooling.

But summer is nearing its end. The public school starts three weeks from Wednesday. I have to have my homeschooling paperwork in to the state by the end of the month. School is once again on my mind.

This year, I am switching from Saxon Math to Singapore. The kids just were not responding well to Saxon, as much as I liked it. We are going to start in with the new Singapore books this week. They just arrived today.

Another big change this year is that Little E will start kindergarten! He just got his new math book, too, and is very excited. (Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics book 2A)

I can’t believe that he is going to be 5 at the end of next week!

I am looking forward to getting back into school. This summer has been very hectic, emotional, and disruptive for all of us and having the sense of normalcy that a school-y schedule will provide us will be a change most welcome.

I also look forward to sharing about our home school life with you here on this blog.

Here is a picture of the bananas from the decomposition experiment after six days.

The banana on the left (without yeast) looks pretty much the same as day one, except for a little browning.

The banana with yeast (on the right) has started breaking down and is all mushy and watery.

You can’t tell from the photo, but the banana without yeast was still very firm, while the yeast banana was very soft.

I swear!

I have been busy, busy, busy and it is all I can do to update my other 2 blogs.

I have so much to post about on here, though. I am going to try to steal some time to write some stuff this week. However, if I can’t, you’ll be glad to know that I am getting a laptop and soon I will be able to post while the kids are having their computer time.

Yea!!!

I thought I would check in and let you know I am still here.

Thanks for reading.

(More to come!)

This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Principled Discovery.

You also might be interested in the Homeschool Hi-Lights Meme, a collection of posts highlighting a moment from the past week of home learning, posted each Monday at Fun Learning.

And I still intend to post those pictures from our banana experiment!