Questions We Are Asked
by Dr. Mary Kay Clark
Director, Seton Home Study School
Do you have any suggestions for encouraging my children to get back to a routine after the Christmas holidays?
It is important to set goals on a daily basis. Children need short-term goals. You can explain that these short-term goals lead to the long-term goal of being finished with school assignments by a certain date.
Discuss the daily assignments, the importance of sticking with the daily assignments, and finishing up each day. Tell your children that anything not finished up at the end of the week must be done on Saturday morning. If it is still not finished up, then it must be finished up Saturday evening or Sunday evening.
Assuming that these daily and weekly goals are realistic for your children, they should be willing to accomplish these goals so they have their weekend free. Also remind them that if goals are not met, there will need to be assignments during the after-Easter holiday and/or in the month of June or July. Most children will respond and want to finish up their work rather than give up their weekends and holidays.
Throughout life, we all need to set short-term and long-term goals relating to all aspects of life. This kind of lesson is as important for your children as the concepts learned in the math and science books.
By the way, classroom teachers will tell you that it is important to insist on achieving daily and weekly goals during the January through March months. When the weather starts to grow warmer, it is more difficult for children to focus on their studies, so you want to accomplish as much as you can during the winter months.
We are starting with Seton in the middle of the year. Where should we begin in the lesson plans?
It would be worthwhile to review the Seton lesson plans for the first half of the year. You want to be sure your student learned the material in the first half of the year, especially reading, math, and English.
Take the time to go over the lessons for the first two quarters, even asking your student to do some of the end-of-chapter reviews. Your child will be the first to say, “Mom, I never learned this!” Don’t even consider going on until you are sure your child knows previous lessons.
On the other hand, if your child does know the material in some subjects, move on ahead to the third quarter, where she can start doing the assignments and earning grades.
Don’t be concerned if your student is not on the third quarter in all courses. The important thing is to start her where she is at in each subject. There is no point in her feeling unsuccessful or unhappy. Start her where she needs to start, subject by subject.
Do you have you any tips for my 8th grade boy who wants to do everything his own way?
When boys and girls reach this age, they often want more independence, and some become rebellious and want to fight at every request for helping around the house or doing schoolwork. However, there are many Catholic home schooling families for whom this does not happen, and we can have comfort that our society’s culture is not reaching all children.
Children want to be good. They are much happier when things are going smoothly. Sometimes, however, they are influenced by other children or by the movies or by television or by the Internet.
Take your son to Mass every day, along with the rest of the family. Talk about the Mass prayers, the readings from the Bible, the Gospel. Read a Gospel story every day. Reading the Gospel stories from a simple children’s book and then discussing the story and the message of the story will help your son start learning the lessons of Jesus.
Pray the Rosary with your children every day. Make the Rosary more interesting by having the boys and girls take turns leading and responding to the Rosary prayers. Schedule it at the same time each day or evening so it becomes a family routine. You might consider the family saying it along with EWTN. The children can watch the pictures of the places where the Mysteries of the Rosary took place.
Setting up a scheme of incentives can be very helpful. If your student can get his day’s or week’s or month’s work done on time, give a reward.
You also want to get Dad involved, and make sure that the child knows how important Dad considers his home schooling. Dad also should also make clear that he expects all his children to show the utmost respect for their mother.
Will you be producing a Grade 5 Math for Young Catholics?
Yes, as with the previous MCP series, we intend to produce a Grade 5 and a Grade 6 Math for Young Catholics. The Grade 5 book should be available by the summer of 2010, the Grade 6 by the summer of 2011.
We should have available the Vocabulary 5 and Vocabulary 6 for Young Catholics for the summer of 2010. Phonics 2 for Young Catholics should be available also for the summer of 2010.
My daughter is not doing the A work she was doing last year. I think her maturity level may not be up to the new grade level. How should I proceed?
First we need to accept the fact that children do not all mature at the same rate. The beauty of home schooling is that the curriculum can be adapted to the child’s abilities.
Try to determine if all the subjects can not be taken at the grade level, or only some of them. In most cases, it is not all the subjects.
Once you have determined the subjects which your daughter cannot handle at the grade level, think about whether she can handle them if she simply slows down and takes more time to try to understand the concepts. In many cases, we have found with our Special Needs children that simply taking a full year to do a half year program solves the problem. The student is still learning at grade level but taking twice as long to learn it.
Another approach is for the student to re-take the material at the previous grade level to reinforce the lessons learned. Sometimes using the same textbook and lessons is effective, but using a different text covering the same material seems to be more helpful for some students.
In many cases, only two years at this slower pace solves the problem, and the student is able to progress at the normal rate in the next grade levels. There is less frustration and more is accomplished when the student is working at the rate that is realistic for the child.
Our local home school support group sponsors all kinds of sports, dance, music, and drama. It seems to be taking more and more time away from our home schooling.
There certainly are advantages to these kinds of extra-curricular activities, but keeping them under control is very difficult, particularly in a large family. Some families are leaving the house every day to take a child to a baseball practice, another child to a music lesson, and another to a play practice. Too much of this interferes with the home schooling and the lessons. It even establishes an attitude that academic lessons take second place.
It takes a great deal of control and determination, but parents need to choose just a few activities so that Mom does not need to drive for a couple of hours each day. Just because a child starts ballet lessons does not mean she needs to take lessons for the next ten years! Johnny does not need to be on the basketball team every season until he is twenty-one.
In this current economic situation, it would be a good time to cut back on some of these activities. An inexpensive activity would be serving at Mass or finding volunteer work that needs to be done in your area.
Starting in the third quarter, the student is to write his own topic sentences and determine which characteristics and events are important. Can you give me some tips about how to help my son?
The lesson plans for the book reports should help you considerably. The first thing we recommend is for you to read the directions to your son, and discuss them. Unlike the first two quarter books, we leave it up to the student, with the parent’s help, to determine the important characteristics of the saint based on what the saint did, or said, or wrote, or thought. Second, read the book along with your son, and discuss the events in each chapter. Some of the characteristics or virtues of the saint should become obvious.
As you discuss each chapter, encourage your son to underline certain sentences, or to make notes or to put checkmarks in the margins. These are items which may be important later in writing a character analysis.
After the book has been read, discuss with your son the possible virtues and events in the book which “prove” that these virtues are evident. Help your son to make an outline of the important events to give evidence for each virtue.
Some parents take a week to work with the student on just the book report so that it is finished in a short time so the student does not forget the events from the first part of the book.
The book report is one of the most important assignments for your son because it encourages putting ideas together to prove a point. It demands inductive thinking. In today’s secular society with the constant propaganda and politically-correct ideas being promoted, after religion, writing book reports might be the most important lessons for your son.
In some Catholic schools, students are encouraged to read a book a month. Back before television, students were reading a book a week. Consider rewarding your son for every book he reads. Encourage him to read and then discuss the book with you. Ask him about the characteristics or virtues of the main character, and have him prove his answers by giving examples of what the character said or did or thought, or what others said about the character.
During the summer, some libraries encourage children to read by giving them a coupon for ice cream for every book read and reported on. Try something similar all year long. You may be surprised at how many books your child can read and enjoy and discuss. It is time and money well spent. Check out the list of biographies and fiction books we sell through our Seton SEM department.
