homeschooling ADHD Archives - Page 4 of 7

Homeschooling through a Learning Anxiety

October 30, 2017Tracy2 Comments

She slumps into the couch, “I hate this. This is stupid,” and she glares at her math sheet. What my child doesn’t say is “I’m scared.” But whether or not she verbalizes it, I’ve learned to recognize her fear. She’s afraid of failing. She’s afraid of writing, especially when things have to be in a particular order (i.e. spelling, math problems, fractions, order of operations, etc.) She’s weary from the effort of trying to sort things out in her dyslexic mind. But she rarely says any of this. Instead, she says, “I hate this. Why do I need to do school anyway? This is stupid.” Her learning anxiety often doesn’t look like anxiety at all, at least, not what I would expect it to look like. Sometimes, it looks more like a pout, a tantrum, even a rage.

It’s taken me awhile to figure this out. And sometimes, I forget and need my husband to remind me. “Ask her if she’s afraid,” he tells me as I recount my latest knock-down-drag-out homeschool day. So, in spite of what my child does or doesn’t say, here’s what I’m learning to say when her learning anxieties have us at a stand-still.

Five things to say when your child has a learning anxiety

I’m here. I have to assure her that I’m here. I’m going to help her. She’s not alone in her struggle.

I have a plan. After assuring her that I’m here for her, I gently lay out my plan to help. “Here’s what this is going to look like.” I’ll scribe her math problems in much the same way I used to scribe her writing. I do 1/2 to 3/4 of the writing for her and have her try when she regains her confidence. I assure her that we will use the abacus or the calculator or another manipulative for the hard part. When we were struggling through spelling and writing, I found her a Dyslexia Aid app that translates her speech to text. My plan includes ways that she is going to find help for what is scaring her.

Remember when… I remind her of past struggles and past successes. “Remember when you used to be afraid to do this particular subject, and we tried this particular thing to help you. And now you aren’t afraid of that anymore.” Reminding her of what she has overcome in the past, gives her perspective. Yes, this is hard right now, but it won’t always be this hard. Yes, this is hard, but we will find the tools to help you. Yes, this is hard, but this isn’t the first hard thing you’ve done.

I’ll fight for you and with you, but not against you. This is my new line, the statement I use to put the ball back into her court. I can help her in many ways, but I can’t make the decision to try. She has to come to a point of decision. She has to stop resisting, get past her “I can’t,” and decide to try. I’m not her enemy. I am for her and with her.

I’ll give you space. I WANT to push for a decision. I WANT to pressure her to try again. I WANT to get this done so that I can finish with my other two kids and get dinner on the table. But added pressure is actually the worst thing I can do for her learning anxiety. Trust me, I know. Sometimes, she needs me to back off and give her the opportunity to muster her courage and decide to try. Yes, this takes time. Yes, this often puts me “behind schedule.” But yes, this is sometimes the most helpful strategy of all. Again, it puts the responsibility of learning back into her court. Giving her space allows her to be in control of a situation that often feels very out of her control.

Other strategies to combat learning anxiety

Another strategy that has helped us to navigate learning anxiety are brain breaks. All that mental energy from trying to sort, decipher, and organize information can leave her brain exhausted and in a state of overwhelm. When she is working in an area of weakness, I have to watch her pace and give her brain a chance to break and relax. These breaks aren’t usually long, maybe 5 minutes or so. But yes, this takes extra time. Yes, it may put me a little behind. Yes, it may mean we don’t get as far in the lesson. What we do accomplish, however, is quality over quantity.

Sometimes our brain breaks require some physical activity. (We love Ultimate Brain Breaks for this.)

Other times I give her an art break to go create something. Art is her strength. In essence, what I am doing is giving her a break to do something she’s good at, to relax her and restore her confidence before tackling the hard thing once more.

We try an entirely new learning strategy. Sometimes, you’ve just got to come at it from a completely different angle. My dyslexic child forces me to be a better teacher. She forces me to research and improve how I present things. She motivates me to do what I wouldn’t have otherwise tried to do. Together, we both learn to do hard things.

Need some more help and motivation? Check out my other posts.

When Homeschool Morning Time doesn’t work

October 9, 2017Tracy5 Comments

I keep seeing posts hailing the miracles of morning baskets and homeschool morning time, and honestly, part of me feels a little left out. The pins and Instagram posts make homeschool morning time look so idyllic. But I sigh and scroll past. It’s a “been there, tried that” moment for me.

Morning time is not an ideal homeschool time for us for a number of reasons. ADHD is a huge one that ranks top of the list. ADHD and mornings don’t mix. Throw in there that I’m not necessarily a morning person either, and I give any morning time routine a maximum of two weeks at our house. Mornings typically involve a lot of reminding and referee-ing. Lots of fighting and moodiness characterize our mornings. It always has, for years. And believe me, I’ve tried everything I can think of to derail this trait. As breakfast improves the moods of my three kids, the distractibility sets in. There is no focus. Getting dressed is hard enough, let alone trying to get school squeezed in there.

Because any kind of disciplined learning (math, for instance) is out of the question with all the distraction, I abandoned structured morning homeschool for a more relaxed morning routine. For awhile, I embraced whole family learning that involved creating and listening to a read-aloud, similar to homeschool morning time. But even then, I could barely get through a story without someone upset that someone else was sitting on their paper scraps or was too close to their personal space or happened to grab the wrong colored pencil or couldn’t figure out the craft or a thousand other possible scenarios. Now, I keep everyone separated with their own tasks, or we head out to one of our extra-curricular activities.

So what do you do when homeschool morning time doesn’t work? When the latest and greatest homeschool strategy seems to crash and burn at your place, what next? You pick yourself up from the rubble of that failed experiment, dust off, and move on. Homeschooling is meant to be as unique as you are.

The curriculum everyone raves about may not be the curriculum that works for you.
The routine that takes social media by storm may not fit your family or your lifestyle.
The latest “homeschool hack” may hack more than you had in mind.

We are different. We recognize those differences. That’s why many of us have chosen to homeschool. So when we don’t fit the homeschool mold, it’s okay. We homeschooled to break out of a mold. So here are some tips to navigate a failed homeschool morning time (or any other failed experiment).

What to do when homeschool morning time doesn’t work

Recognize a failed routine doesn’t mean you are a failure. We jump to this conclusion so quickly. We feel failure rather than reasoning through it. A failed routine is just that, a routine that didn’t work out.
Evaluate who you are, who your kids are, and what is likely to work for you. On most days, we start homeschooling after lunch. Sometimes, we’ve actually homeschooled in the evening. Occasionally, we scramble through some morning assignments so that we can head out to an afternoon activity. One thing about ADHD kids (at least mine), they love to be busy. They love variety and a change of pace. Find a structure that fits your family’s personality.
Be willing to try something that may not work. Failing can tend to make us afraid of trying something new. But one of the greatest lessons you can teach your kids as you homeschool is how to fail well. There are few things I know for certain about my kids’ futures. But one of those things is that my kids will fail. It’s okay for them to see me try things and then admit it failed—and it’s no big deal. When I try something and fail, it takes the scary out of it for my kids. So give it a try.
Remember that every homeschool family has their challenges, whether or not they are posting about them on social media. You are not alone. If your homeschool isn’t peaceful and beautiful and quiet, you are in good company. Mine isn’t either. And I talk with enough friends to know, there’s isn’t either. Homeschool is life, and life is messy.

Who says you have to homeschool in the morning? Who says you can’t start the day with a morning hike or a morning video? Who says you have to read out loud to your kids? Get an audio book instead. Go on field trips. Sleep in. Homeschool at night or in your pajamas. These choices are not necessarily a lack of discipline or a lack of structure; they could very well be the structure that breathes freedom back into your family life.

What if homeschool morning time doesn’t work? Then post on Instagram about your “homeschool afternoon time” instead, and rock it!

Spelling Progress for dyslexia

October 2, 2017Tracy

If you have a child who struggles, seeing progress can be a little tricky. Sometimes progress comes slowly, and most often it doesn’t look anything like we had expected it to. Other times, progress for dyslexia looks more like a complicated dance—one step forward and two steps back, with lots of zigging and zagging. But every now and then, progress surprises us, like laboring in a garden and being surprised by the first ripe fruit tucked under the lush foliage. Homeschooling my dyslexic daughter is exactly this way; our progress comes slowly and often surprises me.

About a year and a half ago, I quit teaching her traditional spelling. Nothing I tried was working, and all our efforts only created tons of anxieties for her. We stopped. I researched dyslexia, and we took a different approach. Instead of phonics and spelling, we worked through Dyslexia Games levels A and B. This year, I thought she had progressed enough to give spelling another try, but not from a purely phonics approach. What I noticed was that my dyslexic daughter was learning to make a visual print of her words in her memory. Dyslexia Games had trained my very right-brained, creative daughter to notice details and patterns.

When I saw A Reason for Spelling, I loved that it continued in this same approach, with lots of fun activity ideas. Our first week in, my daughter traced her spelling words in play dough, danced her spelling words in rhythm with jingle bells strapped to her ankles, made her spelling words with bananagrams, among other fun activities. The result? A 100% on her spelling test! She aced all 15 words. She’s had the same success with her second list, mastering every word. And we’re now working on her third list this year. We take our time and complete every activity, moving on only when she’s ready.

She also loves Writing and Rhetoric. We’ve baby-stepped writing. I scribed for her really all the way until the end of last year. We take turns sometimes now with her daily work, but she’s much more confident in writing. During writing time, we don’t worry about spelling. Her one objective is to get those creative thoughts down on paper. Spelling, punctuation, grammar—all of that comes later during revision. Writing and Rhetoric gets her started with a fable which becomes the framework for what she will write. She rewrites sentences or phrases and finally rewrites the entire fable. It’s a workbook style of learning, which I was very surprised she liked. But it has been a good fit for her. We also play some writing games that add variety and challenge her story-telling skills.

We’ve come so far in some areas, but progress for dyslexia is that complicated dance, remember. And our huge leaps forward in some areas have meant new battles elsewhere. Math is one of those battle scenes right now; reading comprehension is another. So what does progress for dyslexia look like?

Spelling Progress for Dyslexia

Academics. We are in a unique homeschool situation that requires regular testing. My daughter’s testing has shown regular improvement. In some areas that improvement is small and incremental; in other areas, it surges forward and then stalls for a bit. But testing is the least of the ways I monitor progress. When she completes an assignment, when she enthusiastically initiates a project or goes the extra mile on an assignment, when she gets through a day of homeschool without a meltdown, when she makes connections and interacts with what she is learning in her own unique way—all of that is progress.
Skills. Karate is an extra-curricular that I love for my kids. It teaches energy under control (something all my ADHD ninjas need); it teaches character and perseverance. It also teaches skills. My daughter practices and performs long sequences of moves in one direction, spins and repeats the sequence in the reverse direction, crossing her midline, moving left to right and back and forth. At first, these sequences were a huge challenge, and half the time she couldn’t remember her left from her right. Once she did memorize the sequence, she had to perform that sequence in front of judges and a gym full of parents. Sometimes she gets flustered, forgets, stalls, remembers, and pushes on. Each kata she learns, each test she finishes, each belt she earns, each evaluation she receives—all of these demonstrate progress.
Character. Dyslexia has taught my daughter how to endure and how to persevere. Nothing comes easily for her, unfortunately. All of life seems to be a struggle. And yet she presses on. That’s not to say there aren’t discouraging days and moments where she gives up. But overall, she’s learning determination and endurance. And so am I!
Confidence. This progress comes perhaps most slowly and quietly. Often it dawns on me gradually when I realize she’s no longer afraid, when I can’t remember the last time we had a meltdown during a particular activity, when she wants to tackle an extracurricular activity without me talking to the adult in charge about accommodations. I walk a fine line, it seems, between shielding that vulnerable spark of confidence she’s shown and giving it room and space to kindle into a flame.

What spells progress for my child with dyslexia may look nothing like your journey. That’s okay. When you have a child who struggles, you have to decide what progress looks like. You have to sit down and determine what your mile-markers are. But I do encourage you to know what you are looking for. The day to day of homeschooling a child with learning difficulties can be grueling, for both of you. Take a moment and take stock of your progress. It’s there; you just have to know where to look and what to look for. No matter what it looks like, embrace it. It’s progress, no matter how it’s spelled.

5 hands-on ways to homeschool Geography

September 11, 2017Tracy

It’s sometimes hard to engage our busy learners in the study of facts. So many of the traditional methods of teaching a subject are just not a good fit for our movers and shakers. Thankfully, geography is one of those subject areas that lends itself to a lot of variety and hands-on fun. There are so many ways to teach geography in your homeschool, but here are five of my favorite ways to teach geography to my busy learners.

5 hands-on ways to homeschool geography

Create Clay, Salt Dough, or Cookie maps. We homeschool geography in a variety of ways, but getting our hands dirty with clay or dough is always a sure winner for my active, creative ADHD kiddos. When we studied Egypt, we took sugar cookie dough and sculpted the country of Egypt, complete with a frosted Nile and colored sugar sprinkle dessert. (This was pre-ADHD diet, but something that could be easily modified for food sensitivities.)

Six years later, we still love to create maps this way. This year, we began our geography by sculpting imaginary lands and geographic features in clay. I handed them my Geography from A to Z picture glossary, let them choose their favorites and include them in a map of an imaginary world, and then create that world out of clay.

Read Living Books. Reading about places around the world and connecting a story to a place is a powerful way to homeschool geography. Read about children, animals, or fairy tales from around the world. For instance, for one unit study early on in our adventure, we read the children’s adapted version of Around the World in 80 Days and followed our read-aloud on our map. How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World is another fun book that teaches geography with ingredients and a recipe!

Another of our favorites are the Legends and Leagues series. I usually start my kids in the original series in first grade, when they are old enough to read fairly well independently. The other Legends and Leagues books (North, South, East, and West) I usually assign a couple each year. These geography living books are silly, funny, and engaging. If your child likes Life of Fred math, he will enjoy Legends and Leagues.

Sharpen Map Skills by Drawing. Instead of the facts of where a country is located, have your child learn the skills of map reading and map making by drawing his own— of his bedroom, of your neighborhood, of a trip to the park. Depending on your child’s age and ability, have him complete the activity with map keys, compass rose, or grid locations.

Get hands-on with maps (literally). Rather than a map on the wall, I’ve opted for some more hands-on map variations through the years. One year, I printed an enlarged map that we’d been studying and glued it to a poster board, allowing my son to both color the map and then enact the story of Hannibal with his toy soldiers on our enlarged map.

We’ve done the beach-ball globe for quite awhile, which my kids have loved to toss around as well as look up countries we are reading about. And just last year, we added our new favorite, the scrunch map. This map is such an unusual texture. The kids love to spread it out on the floor, laying all over it to find what they are looking for. And equally as much fun is wadding the map back up and scrunching it back into it’s little bag. My kids are literally all over a map, and this close up sensory exploration fuels their love for learning geography.

Pray around the World. A simple way to homeschool geography is through praying for the world. Unreached people groups, current events, persecuted Christians—there are so many opportunities for our children to learn about the world around them through prayer. One of my favorite activities with my kids is to get out our scrunch map and have them pray for a country with their fingers on the location. Adding that little bit of extra sensory input really helps to engage my busy kiddos. We read about the country, about the people, about their struggles, and then all together touch the country on our map and pray for it.

Geography is a fantastic way for your hands-on learner to explore all of their world with all of their senses. Let them read, imagine, and create. Let them use their imagination to better understand the real world, every feature of it. And as they gain a love and appreciation for their world, they will also be fueled by a desire to discover more about that world.

When your child needs a brain break

September 4, 2017Tracy

My kids have energy. Energy that doesn’t wait for a math lesson to end or a school day to be over. My kids move (and talk) all day long. And even when I’m following my cardinal rule of “short lessons,” I can still see their minds straining to focus at the task when all their body wants to do is move. It’s part of being a kid, but it’s even more a part of being a kid with ADHD. And for my daughter with both ADHD and dyslexia, the effort to focus all of that energy on the task of processing information leaves her wilting beside me on the couch. Until I say those magic words…”Brain Break!”

This summer, we picked up the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks (aff. link) at a homeschool convention, and already it’s been a huge life-saver in our homeschool. My kids love it, and I love having a variety of creative ideas that I didn’t have to come up with on my own. I used to have my kids do jumping jacks, plank, or do push-ups. Now, they “jump the river,” “tiptoe-heel race,” “climb a mountain,” act out a caterpillar turning into a butterfly or a seed sprouting from the ground.

I’ll see one child slinking in his seat after a challenging assignment and call out “brain break,” and kids come charging in from every corner of the house. (At least, it sounds like it. My three can easily sound like 14 kids stampeding through the house.) The child upstairs, the child in the next room, and the child beside me on the couch all rush to our brain break jar and huddle around to see what fun is up next. My 6th grader, 4th grader, and kindergartener all love these brain break ideas.

It only takes a couple of minutes, but oh what a difference those couple of minutes make! I’ve noticed, too, that these are great mood-changers. When one of my kids is in “a mood” about school, a couple of brain breaks usually helps her turn a corner and happily proceed to the next task. There aren’t many “miracle” products in homeschool, but I consider this to be one for us.

Could you make your own version instead of buying the product? Sure. There are a number of ideas on Pinterest. But I love how easy this product is to use. If I waited until I could find, print, and make my own, we’d still be doing jumping jacks. The ideas and explanations for those ideas are all ready for us. The $15 print-edition of the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks are on thick glossy card stock, and all I had to do was cut them out and choose a jar. But you could also choose to print and laminate the ebook version for $10.

If you have an active or distracted learner, take a look at the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks (aff. link). It’s a simple, fun solution to jump start your busy learners.

Introducing a love for poetry (to boys and other skeptics)

July 10, 2017Tracy

I know that not everyone loves poetry the way I do. I totally understood why my college students weren’t as excited about our poetry unit in Creative Writing as I was. But that’s never stopped me from loving the challenge of introducing poetry to a skeptic and surprising them with the reality that they could love it, too. Now as a homeschool mom, I still love that challenge. I love introducing a love for poetry to my kids. And often, that love surprises them.

Especially if you have active learners, introducing a love for poetry can be tough. But here are a few ideas to give you a head-start in the right direction.

Introducing a love for poetry

Choose the best books.

I love Shel Silverstein’s books of poetry, especially for boys. If anyone can pull off a surprise love for poetry, Shel Silverstein can. My kids have literally laughed out loud through his books. Falling Up is such a favorite at our house that we now own it (because someone left the library book outside overnight and it got a little too damp to return).

But a new favorite of mine is the book Guyku, haiku for boys (or any kid who loves to play outdoors). Even my daughter with dyslexia couldn’t help but pick this one up.

introducing a love for poetry | haiku — Guyku by Bob Raczka and Peter H. Reynolds

Haiku is probably one of my favorite poetry forms, and these authors do a fantastic job writing kid-friendly haiku. Their website also includes some great teaching resources and free printables.

Create a memorable moment.

Have a picnic, lay out on a blanket, hunt for cloud shapes, and read a couple of fun poems. (Just a couple, don’t over do it.)
Use poetry to introduce something fun you are about to do. Read a poem about the beach and let them guess where you are going. Read haiku about nature and then go on a nature walk to find ideas for your own poem.
Have a poetry scavenger hunt and have them find poems about particular topics you’ve listed. (Choose a fun book and quirky topics.)

Whatever you do, let the poetry be a part of an already fun experience. The positive vibes from the event will spill over into the poetry part of that memory. Your goal is to have a fun, positive memory associated with poetry, rather than the memory of sitting at a desk discussing rhyming patterns.

Provide a fun snack.

Adding food never hurts, especially if you’ve got boys. Food is definitely part of that positive association. I can pull off just about anything with my kids if there is food involved. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Have one particular treat that only comes out during poetry time. Or surprise them with a favorite treat, and a new favorite poem.

I’ve read a lot of the blogs that do the “poetry teas” as a way of introducing a love for poetry to children. It’s a great idea, and when my kids were little, I could get by with that. But my soon-to-be sixth grade son is not keen on “tea parties.” These ideas still work for him, though. And with the right book, I can still surprise him with a love for poetry he didn’t know he had.

The pros and cons of standardized testing for homeschoolers

June 1, 2017Tracy

Though standardized testing might not always be the best method of assessing a child, sometimes, as homeschoolers, we find ourselves without a choice. Currently, we are in a homeschool situation that requires regular testing. It’s taught me a lot, about myself, about my kids, about the pros and cons of standardized testing. Whether you are deciding if testing is right for you or trying to make the best of a state-mandated testing policy, here are some pros and cons of standardized testing that may help you gain a little perspective.

The Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing for homeschoolers

Cons of Standardized Testing

I love the emphasis that learning styles have received, in both homeschool and public education. I love that we are appreciating differences in learning and equipping kids to understand how they learn. But the great irony is that while we are making strides in educating according to the different learning styles, we are still assessing in one style—the standardized test. Consequently, my number one reason for disliking testing is that it is, more often than not, an inaccurate reflection of what a child knows.

Tests are long, boring, and intimidating. Children zone out, or don’t test well. If the material is asked in a way the child is not familiar, he may answer incorrectly even if he knows the material. Tests hurt a child’s self-image, especially if that child is already insecure about certain learning struggles. And honestly, nothing kills a love for learning like struggling through a standardized test. I’ve seen smart children (including my own) feel like they are losers or stupid because of a less than gratifying score. For all the time we spend praising differences, standardized tests reduce a child’s learning to a single line on the graph. And not every child is going to follow that graphed trajectory. We don’t expect them to be on the same trajectory for height or weight at the doctor’s office. The growth of their bodies is expected to vary, but the growth of their brain is supposed to march along the same upward incline as everyone else.

Pros of Standardized Testing

My kids have struggled and excelled on standardized tests at varying points in time. Being in a situation that requires testing has been a growing process for all of us. But as my kids struggle through the emotional roller coaster of testing and test scores and national averages and learning trajectories, etc., we’ve learned a lot, too. Sometimes, the tests confirm struggles I felt we had, learning gaps I was pretty sure were there. Sometimes, a test will help a homeschool parent see a struggle she wasn’t aware of at all. But perhaps the greatest advantage to testing, the one I remind my kids about each time testing comes around, is the practice and preparation for life. For better or for worse, our culture is a testing culture. Driving tests, college entrance tests, college midterm and final exams, further education for job training, performance and certification testing—bottom line, our children will grow up to be adults who have to take tests.

If your kids are anything like mine, they have a lot of testing anxieties. Both my older kids have an ADHD diagnosis, my daughter has anxiety and dyslexia, and both panic any time you say “timed” anything. We’ve worked for years on the “timed” test anxieties, and made great strides. Now, in one sense, we are stepping up that test anxiety with standardized testing and scores. I tell my kids that standardized testing is merely practice for the tests that matter. My kids are told to do their best, but not to stress about the final score. The end goal right now: learn to take a test.

By the time my kids have to take the ACT or SAT, they will have had lots of experience with standardized testing, without the pressure of performing. They will have had lots of time and room to grow beyond the anxieties they experience today. They will learn what questions look like and will have the maturity to think critically and problem solve. There will be a day when the test matters, but for right now, standardized testing is just practice for life.

Whether you have the choice to test, or the choice was made for you, your child can benefit from your knowing the pros and cons of standardized testing. A whole lot about the testing experience is determined by the adults involved. Coach your child through the process and the results. In the end, it could be a great asset to your child’s curriculum for life.