Changes part 2.

So my son has expressed a desire to do his schoolwork without his sister's interference. He also expressed interest in Teaching Textbooks for math, LLATL for language arts and Spelling Power for spelling.

I mentioned all this to Big Daddy and he merely shrugs his shoulder's and says "switch him!"

So we did. I also split of the kids in content subjects. Sam gets to continue his Apologia Astronomy and Story of the World without his "talks-a-lot-about-random-stuff" sister's input. Charlotte gets to do a more age appropriate science and history that explores her interest in the subject.

My goal is to do this without consuming our day and still leaving me time to pursue my own educational goals. I have returned to school last summer and must be able to put in sometime working on my own school projects.

Sam is aware that he must be willing to work independently on some of his work so that this works out for us. However, separating the kids hasn't been as hard as I originally thought it would be.

Without Charlotte's input, working with Sam goes so much smoother. He is able to concentrate on his subjects and dig deep. I reviewed my language arts framework and realized that Sam is right on target for his age. He has a basic concept of the parts of speech and basic punctuation. He is able to narrate quite well and is able to get words on paper. He is working towards doing some simplified written narrations. Written narrations will be worked on with Apologia Astronomy's notebooks and with Story of the World's notebook. LLATL covers copywork, dictations and grammar review for his age. Dropping FLL and WWE actually frees us up to use his interest in astronomy and history to advance his writing ability. He has been far more enthusiastic about writing about topics that interest him then about a random book. WWE has served its purpose and now it is time to let it go. He actually still enjoys memorizing grammar definitions and lists so we can easily add this to LLATL. My only real complaint about LLATL is that it is scheduled for 5 days per week and we school for 4 days per week. So far we just do 1.5 days worth of work for 2 days of each week. I foresee that eventually he will need to do 1 day of LLATL on our off day of school. If I remember correctly, this is what my older kids did.

Teaching Textbooks has been a fun little addition. He is able to work through this almost completely independently.

Spelling Power has been interesting. He does not like mispelling words and gets upset. I keep explaining that I don't expect him to spell each and every word correct the first time. This resource is still questionable. If he continues to get upset with each mispelled word we will need to change back to All About Spelling.

All and all. He is quite happy with the changes we have made.

Charlotte has proven to be a little bit more of a challenge. She fell in LOVE with LLATL blue. UGH! All those pieces kinda drove me nuts with Sam, and now all those pieces are kinda driving me nuts with her. However, she does like it more than 100 easy lessons, and she is enjoying the projects. I have continued the self designed science that we were using before with her. I am currently reading Sarah Noble to her at bedtime until I decide on a plan for her for history. I need a booklist of stories that are well liked by sensitive young girls. I am considering starting WWE 1 with her to help her turn her rather verbose narrations into something concise and relevent.

Having the kids completely separate hasn't proved to be as difficult as I originally thought.