Homeschooling parents: How do you separate school time from play?

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to hs my 1st grader. We've sort of been homeschooling since he was a preschooler, but until now, it's been mostly fun. I don't want to take the fun out of learning (That's why I've decided to hs), but there are some things he needs to learn that is not fun (like spelling, handwriting, memorizing multiplication facts, etc.) My son will spend hours on a topic like space or the Titanic, but doesn't want to sit down and learn these things. So, how do you get your hs kids to do the "school" stuff they don't want to do? Do you have a designated time for school work? Do you have a reward system? Do you just try really, really hard to make it fun?

Please help!

Answer 1

When my son was grade 1, I simply fit in activities to what we were doing. I'd find something fun that taught him at the same time and he wanted to do it. I created games and bought educational games so that the play was mixed with the school.

Now that he's grade 2, I still do those things, but take maybe 30 minutes once a day--first thing in the morning--to work on reading, writing and math. And actually, when approached in the right way, spelling, handwriting and memorizing math facts CAN be fun. :)

The stuff they don't want to do? I keep it minimal so it only takes about 5-10 minutes. But I usually try to figure out a way for them to want to do it. Or I sneakily do it orally here and there throughout the day. :D

My dd is gr. 5. Basically, morning is her formal work time. She does her requirements then works on whatever she wants to. My ds is slowly building up to this.

No, no reward system. I don't like reward/punishment systems. Read some Alfie Kohn sometime.

One last thing: little boys are often not quite ready for the whole formal school thing in gr. 1. Be patient.

Answer 2

You can make things like learning multiplication facts fun.  Learning is supposed to be fun period.

Make up songs and give him treats in between subjects.  Give him breaks and continue to mainly focus on him being a kid- exploring and learning from example.  gl!

Answer 3

What I do is to integrate his skills with things that he really wants to study.

Now that my son is 10, I can reason with him more and get him to work on stuff that he really doesn't want to do; he can see that it will benefit him down the road, so he'll work hard on it.  (He'd have done it before, but only halfway...he wouldn't have seent he point of really putting the work into it.)

If your son loves the Titanic and Space, I would suggest building unit studies around them.  You can print out sentences about these and have him practice his handwriting, and you can have him point out the parts of speech in a small paragraph.  You can have him do art projects related to these, and there are soooo many wonderful math and science applications with both.  (There's a great book, put out by NASA, called Mission Mathematics; it integrates math and physics on a K-6 level in lessons revolving around aviation and space flight.  That's what we're doing for math this semester - I just put him at the upper end of the lessons - and he loves it!  You can find it here: http://my.nctm.org/eBusiness/ProductCata... )

His spelling and vocab words can be the same, and they can come from books that you read (and ones that you assign him to read) on the subject.  He'll also learn history, and you can timeline everything to show him how it works.  There are lapbook units already written on these, if you would like a unit to go off of; you can find some at http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/.

In first grade, it's not necessary to go by the workbooks.  Once I realized that, I still kept them to figure out what skills my son needed to learn, but I devised my own activities for him.  I found that he learned the information quickly and could apply it, which is what I was looking for.  Now, he can tell you anything you'd want to know about the Space Race, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the feudal society of the Middle Ages, the Black Death, the Age of Exploration, and the American Revolution.  He can tell you what scientific developments were made in each age, and about the fields of science that were studied.  In July, he's going to start on a formal history curriculum (TRISMS) that will link it all together.

Because he learned his skills through subjects that he enjoyed, he can write about them in various forms, research them and record his findings, and read about them and understand what he's reading.  Some kids just plain don't work well with a workbook, and that's ok; that's why you're homeschooling him :-)  It's more important that he learn skills than that he learn them in one certain way.  It's absolutely fine to integrate what he needs to know, with what he wants to know.

I don't have a reward system, other than the fact that he can't touch his PS2 (which he bought with his money) until he's done with school, and to my satisfaction.  (He earns a small amount of screen time each day based on his attitude during school and chores.)  He also knows that anything he doesn't get done during the week is going to happen on Saturday...which he'd like to have free if possible :-)

Hope that helps, though!

Answer 4

There are ways to make the things you list fun...

Spelling - play games such as hangman and scrabble.

Handwriting - practice individual letters and when they look good, turn them into drawings (such as weird space aliens).

Multiplication - look into MathBlaster.

I agree that there are times that some learning will be more work than play.  We are fortunate in that our son wants to get the "work" stuff done and out of the way first.  

You may just have to require this of your first grader.

Make the fun stuff a reward for completing the "work" stuff.

I think if you get creative you will be able to make learning fun about 80% of the time.

Answer 5

I am 35 and my brother is 26 we both were home schooled and my mom had us get up every morning brush our teeth get dressed and made us know that it was school time,we did our lessons at the dinning room table which started at 9am every morning our lessons ended at 12 noon everyday unless we had a field trip to the zoo or museum then we went after school ended at 12pm she had a big easel chalk board she brought out everyday and would let us do some work on the big chalk board that made it really fun!

Answer 6

I don't try to make everything fun; some things just aren't fun in life, right? Chores, certain textbooks, going to the dentist-- doesn't mean you don't have to do them.

On the other hand, I don't go out of my way to make a point of trying to make every educational endeavor dry and boring. Sure if there is a more fun and interesting way to approach it, I'm open to it.

As my kids get to that stage where they need to work on writing, grammar, math, spelling, etc., skills, I begin to introduce the workbooks, textbooks & worksheets. This is often their least favorite part of homeschooling, but I introduce a little at a time and build slowly. They know they have to sit down with their "skills practice" work every day, and it can take them a half hour or up to two, but they have to do it.

If it takes them all day, then they're missing out on other things like an afternoon at the park or a field trip or play date, or more fun projects and hands-on experiments, so they get it done and overwith early in the morning. I don't hassle them to do it; I just put it out there.

They can do it, or sit for 3 hours whining over the books before they do it, but if they don't do it promptly, they miss out on the more fun stuff. Usually they only have to hear, "Unfortunately, we're going to miss chess club (park day, can't work on our volcano sculpture) this afternoon because you haven't finished your skills practice yet," they learn to get it done. Once I establish it as routine, it becomes easier.

That's one of the reasons we've chosen to homeschool year-round taking short breaks every few weeks rather than going with the school schedule and taking the summer off-- I find once we get out of the routine, it's harder to get back into it.

Answer 7

We don't! We make school time play time.....make it fun !!!!

Answer 8

Do what you can to make it fun, but at the same time don't be afraid to say, "Now we need to get this done, and then we will be able to play some more."

Make sure to spend the majority of your time doing fun things though, especially for first grade.

Answer 9

What? You don't think learning is fun? That's the first thing you need to address. All the things you've listed ARE fun, if presented in the right way. All those things will be learned as needed, I've got five kids who are reading, not from being taught but because *I* read to them and it was fun. I've got four kids who can multiply and divide without a second thought, because it was important to them to figure tax, subtract sales percentages and make sure everyone got their fair share of mad money on our family vacation.

You might have guessed, but we don't separate time for play from learning. We're unschoolers and all of life is learning. We certainly do not reward, for all the reasons mentioned in Afie Kohn's book Punished By Rewards. However, our life is fun and appealing, and my kids do things because it's fun or because I ask them to.

I think it's great he spends hours on space. He's only six (or seven i guess) and there is no harm in letting him learn through that. Reading a book about space will get all of his spelling, writing and memorizing going. If he goes far enough with space, there's so much math involved. Use that as a stepstone for learning, don't take it away from him! He's learning math through shopping with you, cooking, just LIFE. When he hits eighteen, then worry about it.