So, as you know, this is my very first year homeschooling my children. There have been ups and downs, but it has been a tremendous learning experience. Most of the obstacles that I have come to have been things that I could learn a new way to do, find a different approach, or just stop doing altogether. But there is this one thing... classroom order. I don't know how teachers do it! I certainly don't know how other homeschooling parents do it. Maybe it is because I have three children learning at the same time, but my biggest obstacle in the learning/teaching process is trying to get my children to treat it like school.
Now some people might not take the same approach that I do when it comes to homeschool, which is why it is difficult to get suggestions from other homeschooling parents. Our approach is a school-at-home atmosphere. We use a scheduled day, planned out with timeslots and planned breaks. We use some textbooks, and some worksheets, as well as implementing other learning resources such as videos and the web. My children don't choose what they are going to learn about, or at what pace... I do, because I am the teacher. However, we don't necessarily follow structure to a tee. sometimes we start school at 11. Sometimes we skip a subject or two. Sometimes we trade a week day for a Saturday school day. So I am flexible when it comes to routine sometimes, because I understand that it can become obsessive, and one of the things that I hated about public school was the fact that they could not slow down in order to help a struggling student, whereas I can.
So back to my issue. We have school-at-home, but my children don't respect that atmosphere. I have two children who strike up random conversation out loud in the middle of a lesson,therefore distracting their siblings, and getting me off subject. I have one who likes to answer her brother's questions for them, instead of letting ME answer them. I have one who thinks it is funny to roll all over the floor, and do headstands and back bends rather than focusing on the task at hand. I have tried the whole yardstick pop from my chair, yelling, begging, threatening, but to no avail. They continue to treat school as though it is an afterthought. They continue to ask me if we are done after every single subject. They continue to get up and run down the hall to their rooms if they are done with something while someone else is finishing their paper. How on earth do people handle this problem??
