How I made it Out of the FOG (homeschool and otherwise)

Some of us are better than others at seeing what needs to be done, what amount of work is going to be best for each child, which books to purchase for each level, what projects to complete and how to schedule our days.

I am not one of those people.

I decided to try TOG out of desperation. (more on that in a later post- putting it all in one seemed like way too much!) And then I was overwhelmed.  That is not true exactly. It was more like dazed.   I would often tell my husband that it was like I was walking through molasses.  (or as I read later in loose threads- the fog!)  Seems like I read and read and read, watched webinars and looked at the posts on forums and the loose threads loop, and still was missing something. Somehow we were not getting all that I thought we should from our curriculum.  Nothing seemed to be working right.  I have three levels to contend with, LG, UG, and Dialectic, plus a kindergartner, preschooler and a baby.  For now I will just discuss the older three.  I will come back to the younger three.

My UG dd is dyslexic and in fourth grade.  Her younger sis is two years younger but they both do fourth grade work. My oldest is in 8th grade.  NONE of them were brilliant at self directed work in the majority of their subjects.  I was pulling out hair.  No one seemed to understand that we had gotten onto the history superhighway!  They all needed to listen faster!

Here are the things that I began to implement in our homeschool that have made all the difference in our days and weeks:

First-I read and implemented the book Managers of their Chores by Steve and Teri Maxwell.  This helped tremendously with getting the house under control.  And surprisingly, gave me freedom to do the least amount of housework (to my husbands standards of course) that we could get by with and still feel confident that DHS would not be knocking on our door.  It took some time and effort and prayer, but it was well worth it.

workboxes for older kiddos

Second- I read and implemented most of the book by Sue Patrick: Sue Patrick's Workbox System.  I modified this system to fit what we were already sort of doing and what organizational drawers that I already owned. What I own came from Target, and are basically for scrapbooking- 12x12 drawers with lids attached that are stacked seven high.  The oldest has two sets stacked, the grammar girls share two sets stacked (this gives them each fourteen drawers), and then the K and preschoolers have a set like Sue Patrick talks about.  It is just a shoe organizer rack with plastic shoe boxes that are numbered.  The idea is you fill all the boxes the night before with their work (even including a sharp pencil or whatever is needed in every bucket), and voila, planning is done!  This has been KEY to getting the most work done everyday.  This was THE MOST bang for the buck.  Although I need to say here that we do not do typing with any regularity and we definitely don't run (I can see where it would be beneficial!).  Here is a link to view the drawers in the picture above at target.com: Sterilite 7 drawer craft cart

Workbox system for kindergartner

Third- I pulled out all of the Preschool Activity Bags that I had made the summer before, and all of the other preschool bags of activities that I had come up with myself to rotate through the the K and PreK-ers boxes to keep them busy.  Paula's Archives has lots of links to lots of ideas- just be aware that she lists lots of links and I doubt she can keep up with each one everyday of the year.  Pirating of a site can happen to the best of us.

Fourth- I reimplemented a lot of the "tricks" I had read about when researching for my dyslexic dd.  She would likely be diagnosed ADD in a "real" school situation; she definitely has some difficulty filtering noise and distractions, and has trouble sitting still.  Some of these tricks Molly Evert's recommends in her site counterculturalschool.  Some I read about in some other books, and some my chiropractor had told me about.  They seem to be fairly common among ADHD/Dyslexic/sensory integration issue kiddos.  Here is a list of a few things that helped us:

• an exercise ball in a size appropriate for them to sit on and do their work.  The fact that core muscles are constantly engaged helps the need to wiggle and expends some energy.

• provide some kind of tactile stimulation- a small ball with spikes, some silly putty, some small cut of silky cloth, etc. Anything that can be manipulated and is small enough not to be a huge distraction for everyone else.
• cross-crawl exercises everyday- these include some exercises on the ball as well.

There is a ton of info on this out there, but it seems that it can be hard to find.  I will list some of the books and sites I have read on this issue that were helpful to us.  Look for it under my pages.

Implementing these strategies took a good portion of the fog away!  Then I was able to concentrate on the curriculum issues we were having. They did take time however, and it didn't happen overnight.   

UG.  And then reading level is not across the board- ie some LG reads are harder than UG.  But the content may not be quite as engaging.   I finally ditched a lot of the core UG, kept the core LG, ditched the LG readers and kept the UG in depth and really more of the alternates listed. So far it is working.  I found SOW on cd, and Molly's site myaudioschool.com  is a great resource for audio books that can be streamed right from the site.

Also one of the main things is that we are taking TOG at half pace, taking two and sometimes three weeks to do one weeks work.  This allows us the time for the hands on projects that we want to do, and to finish readings at our pace.  My dialectic dd also wanted to include lots of alternative titles as well as the main listings, this accommodates her desire as well.  

We are now in a groove if you will, and making forward progress everyday.  My house will never be in Better Homes and Gardens, but neither will DHS have a leg to stand on with regards to an unkempt house.  My children may not be Rhodes Scholars, but if they love to learn I am extremely pleased with that, and so (most importantly) is my husband.  He is very adamant that the most important thing is not their education, but their relationships with us and each other.