Home School Days, wherein I rant

What to do when your first grader is NOT an early reader? What to do when readiness is slow to arrive? What do you do when well-meaning friends and family fuss because it looks like this child is going to be behind? You take a deep breath and evaluate.

Learning style of teacher and pupil.  It is a constant question–what curriculum do I use? I used Seton for a very long time. It was not the first curriculum I tried back in the day more than twenty years ago when I first embarked on home schooling. I tried Kolbe (classical) and loved so much about it, but it was not a fit for us. Seton, an academically sound program, turned out to be just what we needed–then.

Now THIS member of our family is a little kinesthetic learner. Seton is more sit down, listen and read. Seton worked well for the auditory and visual learners. Not so this learner who only seems to absorb information through movement.

Evidence? Tell her how to do something– not going to go well.  Show her how, better, sometimes. Walk her physically through doing it–much much better right off.

It has NOT been easy. My entire teaching experience puts the emphasis on auditory and visual learning. My older children were auditory and visual learners. The younger children are appearing more and more to be the kinesthetic style of learner and this has been a challenge for me. I’m apparently slow to adapt, but adapt I am!

I’m hoping to do a series of posts on curriculum for the kinesthetic learner. This will be slow to come along as I am NOT finding this easy. Painful, actually. Still, there are several exciting discoveries we’ve made, and some really difficult activities we’ve entered into, and hopefully this will result in the learning that we want to see happening.

Meanwhile, I am getting really tired of hearing how she might be happier in a school, and how so and so was reading by now. Why is it that a school with a teacher who has NO MORE EDUCATION THAN I HAVE gets a pass when a late reader is taking more than just a few months to learn to read, but I who am more than qualified to teach (BA, education certification, MA) am not trusted to know what I am doing? Yes the kids are bright but that does NOT mean they are ready.

Dear Lord, thank You for the blessing of my children. Thank You for good home school curriculum. Thank You for people who care enough to drive me up the wall. Please help me be patient with them. +Amen.

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