Homeschooling again...

I initially started this blog to sort through my experiences as a new (or at least, newly full-time) homeschooler, but things had been going so smoothly in 2010 (at least as far as homeschooling!) that I really didn't have much to write about. Well, I do still have a lot to write about unschooling, but, anyway, now a problem has arisen that I do really want to address.

The problem is (surprise): math.

5th-grade math is so tedious! At least, the course George is doing now. The awful part is that they keep drilling him on fractions (improper, equivalent, etc.), and on long division and multiplication, and he's just tearing his hair out with it. His frustration level is so high that he has been crying almost every day with it. I gave him a long break in January, and then another week-long break for the unschooling conference, so although I can tell he could probably use another break, I've not been feeling inclined to give it to him. I have let him skip the last two days, though. The trouble is, the course is so darned expensive. I hate to let days go by without his making progress.

I guess even more than that, though, I hate having him develop an attitude about math. I have been telling him that I, who *loved* math in high school, hate this kind of stuff, too. It's boring, repetitive computation. The math I love is the more conceptual, logical stuff, and I just know he's going to love that, too. I mean, he does love it when he gets to do it. There's just too much emphasis on the computation right now, and it has zapped all the fun out of the rest of it for him.

It's making him miserable. And by extension, it's making me miserable. It's a particularly busy/productive time for me as I try to get as much accomplished as I can before the baby is born. But it's hard to focus on my work when George is crying over his math in the next room! He gets all frustrated and then he makes a minor error and gets the problem wrong, and then that sets him off. I've been sticking to the line of making him push through it, but it's not really working.

And call me a softy, but I don't think math should be torture. I don't think it should be excruciatingly dull. Cleaning the cat box, waiting in a long line, tidying his room, now those things can be tedious or boring. But I want him to love learning!

So, I've been looking into alternatives. I'd been hearing about Life of Fred for quite awhile, and we checked it out of the library. He does like it! The series claims to teach all the math you need to know from fractions through second-year college math or so. But it's hard to believe that it's really sufficient. The books are so short and are also written in a story format. They are very funny. They tell the story of Fred, a 5-yr-old boy who goes to college. All the math is taught in the context of things he comes across in his life. Then there are little tests that you have to pass before you can move on to find out what happens in the next chapter. It's really, really clever, and also teaches little smatterings of philosophy and rhetoric and such along the way. I love it, and George likes it as well, but I am definitely having a hard time believing it's as thorough as it really needs to be.

I also found that after the next couple of levels CTY math goes from EPGY to Thinkwell. And when I went to the Thinkwell website, I saw that the lowest level looks like it covers stuff he's doing right now. And it looks a lot less dry. AND it's a LOT cheaper. Part of why I feel pressured to keep pushing George is how much money this course is costing; even though it is an entire year of math, he's supposed to be able to do it in 3 months, and if he goes over the three months we have to pay more. But with Thinkwell you pay way less and you have an entire year to finish the course. BETTER! If I feel like he needs a break, or to focus on other subjects for awhile, I don't have to sweat it.

So, I'm contemplating having him do the Thinkwell placement test tomorrow, to see what he can place into. If he can place high enough, I won't feel too bad about abandoning the CTY/EPGY class in the middle. (I don't know why I'm reluctant or afraid to abandon the current course for the Life of Fred. But I am.) We can use the unused credit for another CTY course, I believe. (He's expressed an interest in their cryptography course.)

That's my plan, I think. The CTY courses have felt like such a safety net--they were what gave me the confidence to start homeschooling George full-time in the first place. Taking on homeschooling is such an awesome responsibility, and I felt that as long as the basics (math and reading, and eventually science) were being covered by this program for gifted kids run through Johns Hopkins and Stanford, well, then he was clearly getting an outstanding education. But it's not working so well anymore.

And part of what's so wonderful about homeschooling is that you can be completely flexible and tailor the whole thing to what is working for your kid. So maybe it's time to accept that this program has, for now, served its purpose, and it's time to move on.

Yes. I want his learning to be joyful. Challenging *and* fun. I really think it ought to be so, at least most of the time.