Almost Unschooling Grama

Homeschooling is hard, but then, so is parenting. If you are even close to being a decent parent, you are already doing most of the things a homeschooler does. If you are brave enough to take the plunge, it’s likely you will find that homeschooling fine-tunes your parenting skills, helps you understand how your children think and strengthens your relationship with them. Most homeschoolers who stick it out for a year or two find themselves on the other side of the fence: Sending their children to a traditional school seems like the harder education option.   If you have a child in a traditional school, the likelihood is that you are already spending as much time or more than the typical homeschool parent spends on educating a child. How can that be? A child in a typical school has to be readied for school every morning, then there’s transport, homework after-school, extra-curricular activities, etc., not to mention all the stress caused by doing these things when the child is tire...

This is my grandson's word problem box.  One of my biggest math book pet peeves is that kids are given a set of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems, but the problems on the page or on the worksheet are all the same type. They almost never need to figure out what kind of computation they need to make.  So, I cut up the books or worksheets and place them inside the box and have my kids pick out 2 random problems to solve a day. I have them circle all the numbers and underline the question. I also encourage them to draw a picture of the problem if they aren't sure of what operation they should use.  If they still need help deciding I have them highlight  any clue words from a chart like the one found here  https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/clue-words-chart-11156394    At first, most kids need you to walk through the entire process, but if you are consistent with the 2 problems a day rule, they will pick it up quickly.