How do I get things done?

[mom2four]

My son is in 10th grade. Outside of the homeschool he takes some classes that meet 1-2 days a week and has assigned work to do at home. For that he is taking Biology, Second Form Latin, and Critical Thinking 2. At home he is doing Algebra (did 1/2 year last year)and Tapestry Y2.

For TOG, he is doing all history reading and occasionally answering questions. He does the trimmed down Literature reading with some of the poetics and frameworks and some of the questions being answered and he does the literary terms cards. He also is doing the timeline and for map work I give him the teachers maps and he makes transparencies for his transparency project. Sometimes he does the church history readings which are usually listened to off his kindle while he is doing some other school busy work like the maps or timelines.

Our schedule is such that he is away at school all day on Wednesday. I assign his TOG work on Thursday, giving him two days plus some time on the weekend and then again two days, finishing up on Tuesdays.

Here are the issues...we can't seem to find any time for discussion. He works all day on Mondays and Tuesdays, usually into the evenings. I have a set amount of work to be finished on Thurs/Fri and what doesn't get finished is moved to the weekend. Then I have him do some of his reading then but try to let him have a bit of a break to spend on the computer or playing wii. He is frustrated because he is constantly busy. We have yet to work in grammar which he is terribly behind on and he does no writing beyond the weekly essays he is assigned in his critical thinking class. I still need to teach him the formal essay, literary analysis, research paper, etc.

Any suggestions?

[Pat]

First, let him take ownership of his study time schedule. If he carried all these classes in a school, he'd be in that school for the full day of school and come home with homework.

Next, set a fixed time to do Tapestry discussions. I can't quite tell what you mean by work on Mondays and Tuesdays. Is that a paid job or just his school work? Obviously a paid job you don't have a lot of control over, but if that is the case, I'd evaluate the number of hours he is working. It maybe he is working too much.

Next, I'd be tempted to stop running Tapestry on the same schedule as the mid week coop. Instead I'd run it M-F, but I would assign next week's lesson on Friday which would allow him to read on the weekend if he chooses. This would help him by not having all his deadlines on Tuesday.

Then I'd do lit on Thursday and history on Friday or vice versa and require X amount in math each day and I'd hold to that. Have a set time for him to begin, say 11:00 AM.

Help him learn to use a schedule himself. There's a great planning calendar found in the Organizational files of this group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Myvariousfiles/files/

[mom2four]

Thanks for the reply Pat. No, he does not work outside the home. All work is school work. We tried doing M-F but he was getting confused with different deadlines between home and Brighton (his outside classes) so we moved all to Th-T which still gives him the weekend to read.

I give him his assignments for the week and he puts them in his planner. I think part of the problem is getting him to realize that the workload is normal for high school but when he gets so far behind, I start to doubt if I am giving him too much. Thanks,Diane

[Mrs. Meg Logan]

Thanks for the reply Pat. No, he does not work outside the home. All work is school work. We tried doing M-F but he was getting confused with different deadlines between home and Brighton (his outside classes) so we moved all to Th-T which still gives him the weekend to read.

I give him his assignments for the week and he puts them in his planner. I think part of the problem is getting him to realize that the workload is normal for high school but when he gets so far behind, I start to doubt if I am giving him too much. Thanks,Diane

Have you watched him carefully to determine why he falls behind? Is he a slow writer, or reader? Is he foolish with his time? Can you re-vamp his planner to make it easier for him to really schedule his time?

This is the first year that I am requiring my son to copy his weekly assignments and then work independently all week, staying focused and meeting deadlines without my help. We've been at it successfully for 6 weeks now, but he is only in UG. His course load is Latin I, Zoology3(1/2 year)/then Human Anatomy(1/2 year), Logic Introduction, Accelerated Pre-Algebra (online class meeting one time per week), plus UG TOG's almost ALL reading (though sometimes I can't find a book, or can't fit it into the timeframe). I did discover that if I want him to complete the work, *I* have to guard his time. I cannot allow outside commitments for myself (like the chiropractor, or errands) to get into his school time. Sometimes I find I can prepare him for that in advance and he can plan to bring school with him. The other thing is that I have scheduled daily routines, with time slots, so he fills in his assigned activity in the appropriate time slot. I do not tell him which Lit period to read his Lit, but I do assign mandated Lit periods (and do the same for each subject).

Another thought I had, is it possible that travel time to the classes is eating up so much of his time that he CAN'T complete the workload? Have you worked on ways to maximize travel time? Could you do your discussion or part of it, during a travel time, or a meal time?

I think you will have to schedule a required discussion time, that he is required to be at, prepared or not. We are just about to move into Dialectic History or Literature work, and I think that is what I will be doing.