Do You Have an Interesting Story
or a Sage Word of Advice?
This site is mostly about me sharing the advice and tips that I've discovered while homeschooling our boys.
But now, it's your turn.
I would love to hear about your best and your worst experiences, your most interesting information on homeschooling,
your top tips... anything about homeschooling that you'd love to share.
Shauna's Story
from Massachusetts
Hello Michelle!
I stumbled across your wonderful website after entering "+boys +energy
+noise" into a search engine in a quest for fellowship!
I homeschool our 3 boys, 3, 5, and 6.5, and am often laid low by their sheer
exuberance. They are *truly* sweet, loving, gentle children, yet I often
feel guilty for not being able to match their unique level of vitality.
Fostering close family bonds was my primary reason for choosing to
homeschool, and having come from a family of
crafting/reading/recorder-playing girls, I am always baffled as to what is
appealing to my sons--- When left to their own devices, they zoom around
(and around and around) the house in a tight pack, re-arranging what I once
thought to be permanently situated furniture, all in order to properly set
up their next big adventure, full of peril and disaster!! I can only watch
in wonder!
I appreciate your effort in supporting Mothers in nurturing our sons in ways
they can appreciate and benefit most from. I look forward to gathering more
ideas from your newsletters.
For what it's worth, there are a couple of things we do here that seem to be
working well. After realizing the sheer boredom of single workbook-type
language instruction, I decided to try having my oldest write a chapter
book. It is an on-going adventure story starring all three boys and their
favorite cousins. Each chapter is usually 5 or 6 sentences explaining the
exciting, scary, or absurd situation the explorers find themselves in and
what they plan to do about it! Occasionally, a chapter is accompanied by an
illustration. He has been writing his story for 5 months now and has 42
chapters! Twice a week, we make spelling, punctuation and penmanship edits
and then use his story as a copy book. He then has a "draft" copy and his
"good" copy. It's fun and interesting for us to look back, and see both the
free-form continuity and the overall progress of his writing and penmanship
skills, and he never complains about the boring content of the copywork- In
fact, he feels proud!
Additionally, my children both love
Miquon Math
with Cuisenaire rods, and
playing 4 Way Countdown
from Cadaco. It gives great practice in recognizing
number families and relationships among the four basic operations.
Hopefully these ideas can help others find joy in educating their sons...I
apologize for being so wordy!!
Thank you for your fantastic site....
Shauna Cain in Massachusetts
Dear Shauna,
Thank-you SO MUCH for sharing your story. I can't wait to get it posted - I
think it'll really be helpful to people. I especially loved your idea about
your son writing the chapter book. My boys LOVE to write stories, and I'm
sure they would be thrilled to do their handwriting, spelling, grammar, etc
in this way!!!
If you think of anything else you'd like to share, I'd love to hear it. And
don't apologize for being wordy... it was very interesting! Just the right
amount of words. :)
Take care and I hope to hear from you again,
Michelle
So... what's YOUR story?!?
If you've been homeschooling your sons and adore it as much as we do, please share your stories with us! I'd love to
try them on our sons and I'm sure others who visit this site will thank you, too!
