... Clara?
Sigh... time for my biannual homeschooling meltdown in regards to this child.
So, here's where we are right now...
1. Math - we're actually doing decent here.... not great but decent. I have her plugging away through Horizons for my own piece of mind. However, where she's really doing well is with the living math approach. We've added more living math books and we're playing more games again.
2. Handwriting - still a struggle but we're making some headway... finally. We have a handwriting tutor (an occupational therapist) who comes to the house once a week to work with her. She still really struggles, which makes me sad, but like I said, she is finally making progress. And thankfully, she's made enough progress that she can get more practice at it because she's able to do written work in all of her subjects.
3. Language Arts - we're finally doing more work with this now. I have tried working on LA with her at different times but it was just more frustrating than it was worth for either of us. Uppercase and lowercase letters were all the same to her... capitalizing the first letter of a sentence meant nothing to her since she tended to write in all caps anyway. Now that handwriting is beginning to click with her, simple grammar rules are making sense too.
4. Reading - she's moving along in reading. She's finally graduated to reading easy chapter books. She has a friend who is an avid reader and it's pushing her to push herself with the level of books that she is reading. I still have her do quite a bit of reading aloud to me so we can work on issues together.
5. Spelling - not great but we're slowly but surely making progress. She's doing an online spelling program at the moment, but I need to get back to something more hands on.
6. History, Science, etc. - to be honest, these have not been at the top of my priority list for her this year. We have had so many other, more pressing issues to work on after her learning assessment that I haven't been doing anything terribly formal for her.
So, here's where I'm at... where do we go from here? What is the best overall approach to take with her? I need a plan. I know that both of my children have different learning styles and completely different interests. I know that what works for Alex will not work for Clara. Alex is thriving with Sonlight this year... it's been really exciting to see. However, as much as I would love to have two Sonlight kids and be able to pass curriculum down, I'm just not sure that it's the right fit for Clara. Sonlight is so literature rich which is right up Alex's alley... he could lose himself in books all day long. Clara always has to be doing something. Things click better with her when she actually sees how they work, when she gets to touch and feel it.
Right now she's doing well with and has a keen interest in music. She's been playing violin for over a year now with moderate success, but now that her teacher has been showing her the same pieces on the piano as well as the violin, her playing has really taken off. Given her interest in piano, she will be starting lessons next week. She's also doing well with dance. She loves it dearly and it really seems to be the one activity where she can truly focus.
I've been re-reading the descriptions of all of the different homeschooling approaches. Would Charlotte Mason be a good fit for her? Would a more Montessori based approach be better? Would we just be better off focusing just on a few things and taking a more unschooling approach for the rest? I'm doing lots of research right now trying to figure out what would be a good fit. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them! In the meantime, I'll be dragging out all of my books and catalogs again! :-)
For School:
