What didn't work for us Meme

Time to start (Like I ever stop) thinking about next year's curriculum. In pruning some dead wood, so to speak, here's what didn't really work for us this year:

1. Starting too late in the day. I have a dear friend who can begin school in the mid-day, and they do a very good job of it. If we procrastinate, linger over breakfast, get too involved in chores or hobbies, and so on, school gets shoved aside, and we end up not doing much.

2. Turning on the computer before 3:00 in the afternoon. This thing sucks you in. Seriously. There is no need for it, and we are waaaayyy more productive if it just isn't turned on.

3. The telephone trap is also a bad one to get into. Even if I have a legitimate need to call someone for something, to pick up the phone is to spend (waste) a half hour. ugh.

4. Assignments that are too open-ended. We attempted a unit on King Arthur this year. Although I think that the girls did learn alot, it was hard to get them to complete assignments without a concrete framework of what I expected from them.

5. "Winging it" without really preparing anything specifically. This had two problems, first, I wasted too much time trying to figure out what I was doing, and it lead to more of the open ended assignments that my kids rebelled against, see above.

6. Expecting too little of Deuce. She is a challenge, make no mistake, but giving her less to do, because I thought that it would be better, or would avoid arguments, was nearly always a mistake. Bribery worked much better.

As far as specific curriculum, we had some hits, such as My World Science (which, sadly, is no longer being published), Genevive Foster's George Washington's World, Henty's The Dragon and The Raven, and Friday math games. We've also had some misses, such as the above mentioned King Arthur study, Primary Language Lessons (for Deuce, it worked well for Ace), and nearly all the attempts at art.