Monday begins our new school year. It’s hard to believe I’ll be teaching a 5th-grader this year! We are very excited to get started, having taken off most of the summer. We usually start back in July, but circumstances prevented that this year. I think it’s fine though, we’ve had a fun summer!
I’ve spent the last several days working on writing down lesson plans. For those of you who know me, I’m pretty sure you just fainted! But since I’m not using pre-written unit studies like I have for the past several years, it’s important that I have some idea of what we’ll do each day. This is the first year that we are using individual subjects, attempting to tie them all together in a unit studyish way.
I’m only planning a quarter at a time, using these Subject/Quarter Planner planning sheets. I really heart these planning sheets. I like that I can focus on one subject at a time, writing down each assignment for the entire quarter. Then on a daily basis, I’ll be handing Ben on of these Homeschool Timer sheets which will list all of his assignments for the day. This daily sheet makes it clear to Ben what my expectations are. The sheets will include what assignments he needs to complete for each subject, as well as an allotted time in which to complete them.They also have the added bonus of a little check box, so he can check things off as he completes them. I think he’s gonna love the check boxes for some reason.
I feel strongly that Ben needs some structure to his homeschool day. He is easily distracted which causes him difficulty with staying on task. I’m hopeful that using these timer sheets will be helpful for him. I’ll be taking this a step further by setting an actual timer. When his time is up, he will move on to the next assignment, resetting the timer. At the end of the school day, I will set his timer for one hour of media time. Media time includes television, computer games, Wii, or Nintendo DS. If he has school work to complete because he didn’t finish in his allotted time, he must finish it first, eating time from his media time. (thank you to my sweet friend, Melissa, for this idea!)
The goal, of course, is for Ben to complete his schoolwork in a timely manner and then to be rewarded with an hour of media time at the end of the day. Media time is important to him. He is not allowed to freely watch TV or to play computer or video games at will. When he gets time for these activities, he is ecstatic! So hopefully, this reward will be the impetus he needs to stay on task. I suspect that in the beginning, he will be fortunate if he ends up with 5 or 10 minutes of media time. But, I don’t think it’ll take more than a couple of weeks of using his media time for leftover school work for him begin working hard at completing his assignments. At least I hope not.
Another new thing we are trying is to leave Fridays mostly unplanned. The idea for this is to have Friday Fun School! Friday Fun School might involve a field trip, fun math games, a super messy science experiment, hands-on projects for history, art, or geography, or anything else we can come up with that would be FUN for school! It can also be used to make up the work that didn’t get completed during the week, even after using up the media time. I’m hoping that this won’t happen, but Ben is fully aware that it can. He’s really excited about Friday Fun School though, so again, I’m hopeful that this reward will be helpful in keeping him on task.
I’d love to hear your ideas for keeping those easily distracted kids on task. Feel free to share in the comments!
