far above rubies wrote:This is my 2nd time through K and my dd6 is starting to lose ground. My first child was only 5 when we did K, and we found it moved too fast but with this child, she's losing ground. We need to pick it up a notch or two. We're just wrapping up the "T" (yes, we're obviously going very slowly! LOL) We took off a week at Thanksgiving and a couple of weeks for Christmas.
Basically, I have a dd who is very flighty, has an incredibly short attention span, is extremely artsy, grows bored incredibly fast, etc. Last year, we all did ADV together, but this year I chose not to include her in ECC. She looks forward to doing her school, but after about 5 or 10 minutes, she is DONE!!! In fact, before we even finish a worksheet, she asks, "Are we done yet? Is it much longer"? You'd think that one worksheet is just killing her!
And she likes to follow her own path. If instructions state to color something a specific color, she will ignore those instructions if she wants to do something differently. So, my thought was that using a hands-on curriculum for my extremely short-attention spanned daughter would be good, but now I'm thinking we need to approach it in a totally different way. It isn't a situation in which she needs more discipline or anything. She doesn't act this way because she's trying to be defiant or anything, she's just really, really, really creative.
She has the names and sounds of the letters down but it seems as though we can only get through 10 minutes at a time but by the next day, I can't tell if she's grasped any of it at all. I thought of perhaps doing two lessons a day--one in the morning and then another in the afternoon?
When we start back up in January, how would y'all recommend we proceed? Two letters a week? Not do every single worksheet? Focus on sounds? Any thoughts? All I know is that we gotta pick up some momentum or I'm gonna lose this girl's attention.
When my second born went through MFWK blending and then reading was coming easily for him. So we did every worksheet, but I didn't do all the activities in the yellow pages. For the blend ladder he would always want to blend all 5 vowels for each letter that came along, instead of one or two. He did school 3 days a week for K, and I would do one unit a week. If I remember correctly he would do day 6 with day 5. Then days 1 & 2 together, and 3 & 4 together. He was able to do more than one days of work sheets in a sitting. His handwriting was also very good and came easily so it did work to accelerate the program.
So in the end we took a year to do it (I gave him more weeks off than brother), but with less days. I wanted him to ease into school, have a lot of K play-time, and like school. So this schedule worked well for him for K.
She sounds like a really normal 6 year old to me. It is the unusual 6 year old that really and truly is mature enough to sit down and do work. I taught piano for 8 years, and piano lessons tend to draw families that are educated and educationally minded. It also tends to draw children, who often, do well in school. When I first started teaching I had a studio full of 6 & 7 year olds all starting piano. The very small minority could really last 1/2 hour lesson. The rest I creatively got through a 1/2 hour lesson. By the end of my 8 years I didn't take 1st grade students and highly encouraged parents to wait until 2nd grade.
6 year olds can learn. Some are ready for school. The majority. Hmm... not in my experience. I have one right now who is, ds6, and he is my surprise. Often 6 just isn't ready for sit down work. Can you teach her? Of course. Short 5 minute lessons, and as much 'in real' life teaching as possible. I think it is easier to teach a 6 year old to read, then write or play a piano. Even the parents who cried "but my child is 'brilliant, and has an IQ of 145"; had children who didn't have the maturity to sit still at age 6!'
Enjoy her... in 6 months she will be ready, and probably know enough to start mid-1st grade work. In the mean-time, if it were me, I would do math orally and teach her to read & read books to her. Well that is what I did with my oldest who at 6 wasn't ready to sit still and follow book directions due to creativity. It was a good plan for him, and I am glad that I did it. At 8 I have a mature student, so it worked out just fine.
Using MFW since 2004. 