I’m not looking to homeschool my kids, but I do I want to create some effective age (8 -11 year olds) appropriate lessons and teaching materials for some summer learning.
Is there a community that sort of does that?
A separate and related question How can I do home tutoring for subjects they are weak in?
For summer, I usually enforce 30 minutes of reading a day and otherwise take local trips for hands-on type education. Last summer, we hit tidepools and the history museum and did some kid-friendly science experiments.
You could look for workbooks or something similar for more targeted subjects.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have mixed experience with workbooks, do you have a recommendation?
I have have not had luck getting my kids to read consistently.
I have done outings and when they were younger I was able to get some education value out of them. As they have gotten older I don’t have as much to offer them. It’s fun, but not really much learning for them
Reading is non-negotiable in my house. His teacher this year also required 20 minutes of daily reading as homework, so it was easy enough to keep it up. I don’t care what my kid reads as long as he’s reading - that means it can be Dogman or Captain Underpants books or whatever he wants to read for those 30 minutes. Sometimes he chooses to write something for that time because he’s found a love of writing recently.
Outings are our family time. The experience itself is enough for me, I don’t push the educational angle a lot. We just talk about the stuff we’re seeing and it leads to deeper conversations about the world or him or whatever he wants to talk about.
This is just to help inspire you for the summer, sorry I don’t have more recommendations for workbooks and the like. We just don’t use them outside of school because his classroom is already so structured.
This is why I worded my question in a specific way, my challenges getting them to read are absolutely a parenting issue as opposed to an education one.
I don’t yell at my kids, but they seem conditioned to only respond to being yelled at. getting them to do things they aren’t inclined to takes a lot of effort on my part and being consistent in that effort while working full time, cooking ,shopping and driving them to activities is more than I have managed so far. I have read how important consistently is but just have not achieved it yet.
Wrapping back around to the ‘class’ idea I was going to take them to the library for each lesson to set the environment for learning.
I appreciate how filled your time is, and I struggled with consistency myself (still do but my kids are grown, thank goodness). If possible, set a specific Silent Reading Time and sit down with them and your own book. Make it 15 minutes rather than 30, and paper not screens just so you don’t have to keep checking. Don’t have anything planned for the 30 minutes after, so any of you who wants can continue reading longer. Pre-bedtime is one option, unless you’re already reading aloud to them because that’s even better.
By the way, they’re old enough for some of the Terry Pratchett books, like Equal Rites or Maurice and His Amazing Rodents. And you might find a little relief from reality with a Discworld book yourself. When you have to get up and go deal with the dishes or whatever, leave your book open in case one of them is intrigued.
I feel you SO HARD on this, truly. It’s really difficult to juggle everything and still be a “perfect” parent. I lose my shit sometimes as well, it’s inevitable.
The library is a great idea! It sets a good tone for learning and it’s not as distracting as being at home where all the cool stuff is lol
My two tricks for this are leaving out comic books (easier read, but same number of words, if they read long enough), and reading to them at bedtime (because it’s just time and attention, and they love that.)
On the bedtime reading, beware - they will interrupt constantly at first, because they want the extra attention more than they want the story to move along. Lol.
Edit: Oh! And weekly trips to the library. They get a dopamine hit from choosing and checking out books, and then they revisit that hit by reading the books later. I also let them pick something for me to read to them, if they’re interested in it, but afraid to try to read it.
Also, most libraries have comic books, often sorted by age appropriateness.