son resistant to required subjects

Discussion in 'Home Schooling' started by kitty fabulous, Dec 12, 2005.

  1. kitty fabulous

    kitty fabulous smoked tofu

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    our state has a lot of subject requirements for homeschoolers. (fortunately, although they can regulate subject they can't regulate content, but that's a rant for another time.) some of the required topics - music, for example - my son just isn't interested in. we used to unschool before the separation, but we've been moving around a lot and i've started to give into family pressure to use workbooks and push the reading, which he also hates. i'm staying with relatives and one of them is a public schoolteacher, who is really getting in my face. it's all causing stress on my son & his education.

    my annoying relatives i'm just going to have to find a way to deal with on my own. but what do i do about state-mandated subjects that my son just hates? is there a way of "teaching" them that i'm not seeing? it may be that the very reason why he's resisting is becuase he knows they're required. how do i handle that?
     
  2. good2bhome

    good2bhome Member

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    Does your state require a portfolio review or testing? That usually makes a big difference. Where we live they do state that these subjects and this many days must be covered however there are no check ups so that gives us alot of freedom.
     
  3. kitty fabulous

    kitty fabulous smoked tofu

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    no portfolio requirements. testing is not required until the fourth or fifth grade.
     
  4. Beyond-the-Clouds

    Beyond-the-Clouds Senior Member

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    Music is a required corse? I never had any music stuff in school any. I wish I could "learn" about music in school (learn is in quotations since I know everything about music and hencefourth it wouldn't be learning but ratherforth revewing). Maby you should pertent to teach him stuff. Like not relly teach stuff but tell the extablishment that you are.
     
  5. HADLEYCHICK

    HADLEYCHICK Member

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    What are some of the other subjects he dislikes? What are the things he actually likes? Maybe there is a way to combine them in kind of a humanistic approach. Like does he like math but not music? Give him sheet music and have him add the value of the notes in famous pieces, tell him it is a secret code written by this guy named Handel. Play the piece while he works. There are hundreds of ways to teach it. I once taught an entire creative writing/language arts unit on pirates, we played a totally made up desert island game, told pirate stories, did pirate research, and art from far away lands. then we put on a play from one of those lands. It was actually a course in folktales but instead of quiet kids who liked to read I got a rowdy bunch of boys. So, out came the pirate lore and it was an intro to the rest of the material.
    Don't give in to the pressure, that is probably one of the reasons he is having trouble.
    H
     
  6. mamaboogie

    mamaboogie anarchist

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    since you're cool to unschooling, think of ways that aren't sitdown boring filling in workbooks type stuff. Go to the library and let him pick any books, tapes, videos, he wants. Just keep the receipts and put them in your homeschool journal or whatever you use to keep records. There's your reading and music curriculum if anyone wants to see it, plus each individual subject the books might have in them. Even Dr. Seuss, poetry, chapter books include stuff you can count as "lessons" if you really think about the content and just take a few minutes to talk about it with your kid in a non-preachy sort of way. For example (and I think my kids are a bit younger than yours) The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling included geography (we found India on the globe), history (English colonization, for example), science, anthropology, sociology, biology, and more! So I stapled the library receipt into my notebook, and listed all the new concepts she learned while being read this book at bedtime (like a chapter each night). I make a list of new vocabulary words in my journal from each book we read, and every time she asks me "what does that mean?" We were walking around our backyard and she asked about the old tree stump, the mushrooms, lichen and toadstools, which opened up a huge exploratory mission on decomposition, ending up at our compost pile. Just write everything down. At least that is how I'm approaching homeschooling in a very unschool-unfriendly state. If anyone wants to see my records, I'll just hand them twenty pounds of journals - LOL!
     

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