How Involved Do I Need to Be in My Child’s Schoolwork?

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For parents who are used to teachers teaching the material and sending out homework, the only hands-on involvement you might be used to having with your kids’ schoolwork is making sure they’ve completed their homework. In homeschooling, it’s all on you, but how much do you need to be sitting and watching them get things done, and how much can you just assign and have them do on their own?

Of course the answer depends on many factors—the age of your child, how many children you’re homeschooling (and how many little ones are underfoot, as well), the subject, the child’s personality, and honestly, the time of year. My kids are more motivated a the start of the school year, so I often get them going, and they take off! By February, I feel like I have to drag everyone through their work (and bribe them with M&Ms sometimes).

In general, from preschool through 3rd grade, my kids go through most of their work with me. In fourth grade, I do expect a general step up in personal accountability, with them referring to their planners and completing some assignments without my direct assistance, but I still teach the math, Latin, grammar, writing, and spelling lessons. With math, Latin, and writing, my fourth grader usually has some workbook work to do after our lesson, which she can usually do on her own if I'm gently prodding her every once in a while. But the grammar and spelling are mostly oral (or together on a dry erase markerboard) and take 10 minutes each. History and science depend--we have timeline cards as our history spine, and we use a lot of historical fiction read alouds/audiobooks to supplement our topics, so usually I am reading or playing an audiobook while they’re listening and coloring in a Dover historical coloring book. With science, we do labs, demonstrations, and nature journals together, but I have them watch documentaries or read library books about the subject on their own.

In sixth grade, we expect another big step up in personal responsibility. My kids start taking more classes online or at our homeschool co-op with other teachers, so I will sit down with them and the relevant syllabus at the beginning of the school year and strategize how to complete their assignments on time, but I don’t sit down with them and teach them the topic or watch them complete their schoolwork. I do try to check in on them before deadlines to make sure they have things turned in, and I’m available for help if they need it. It’s been a bit of a rough transition, but by seventh grade, my son was able to schedule his days and complete his schoolwork on time almost all of the time.

I sit at the school table with the kids all morning (and into the afternoon for the bigger ones), so even if I’m working with just one of the kids, I can see if everyone is actually doing their work or dawdling. This may sound time-consuming, but it actually saves me time because I don’t need to do standardized tests, weekly evaluations, or unit tests (particularly for the little ones) to assess their knowledge of a subject. When you're doing the subject matter together and not for a teacher or a grade, you have a very clear sense of what the kid does or doesn't understand. I don't really give grades until middle school--if they get a math problem wrong, I circle it and point out where they went wrong and ask them to correct it. If they misspell a word, I add that to our misspelled words list in our daily planner and add that to the list of spelling words that we work on until they can spell it correctly. But for correcting it on a worksheet, I spell it correctly for them and have them recopy it on their paper. If we're going over, say, prepositions, and the third grader doesn't seem to be able to identify the preposition in the sentence "The bird in the tree is singing," I backtrack and remind her of the definition of a preposition and recite the list of prepositions (both of which we also memorize in 2nd grade and review every year thereafter). If she's still staring at the sentence and can't find the preposition, I'll prompt her, "What word is showing the relationship between bird and tree?" By that point, she should be able to see that IN is the preposition. She's gotten the right answer, but I didn't just give it to her--I made her cycle through her knowledge and figure it out.

To sum things up, I treat homeschooling like a full-time job. While I can occasionally toss a load of laundry in the washer or prep dinner to throw in the crockpot, I don’t multi-task other housework or activities while I’m homeschooling. I don’t answer my phone unless it’s my husband, I’m not on facebook, I’m not trying to answer texts or emails, and I don’t schedule regular activities during our 8-3 time. Depending on your family situation, you may be able to get more done during the school day than I do, but I find that it reduces my frustration if I don’t even try to check off my to-do list until school bins are put away for the day.

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