I've come to a significant fork in the road regarding homeschool. We have been using KONOS, which I think is a wonderful curriculum. I used it last year with my oldest son who was in 6th grade. This year he's in 7th and my other son is home with us and in 6th. I was really looking forward to my younger son joining us in all the cool, hands-on things that KONOS offers.
We've diverged somewhere along the way between what I envisioned and the reality of the first 2 1/2 months of school this year.
First (and this is no surprise), my boys have very different learning styles. Not only that, they don't like the same subjects in school. While unit studies can be a fun way to learn, we've wandered too far to the unstructured side and it has not been a good thing - for them or me.
Secondly, the boys don't really have the boundaries in their lives that they ought (courtesy of their parents). Sometimes, though, you just don't realize how far things have declined when you're in the midst of it. Fortunately, God is gracious and merciful and does not leave us in an unhealthy place when we actively pursue Him. We need to focus more on godly character development so that we can live productive lives that please the Lord.
The result? We will make a shift to more focused academics (new cirruculum) and at least part of it will be done independently on the computer. There are a couple of reasons for this. With the boys not interacting very well nor liking the same things, it is very distracting and disruptive for me to teach them both together. In addition, if I work with one while the other son does something else, the second son will usually sneak off to play. The program I'm looking at will lay out exactly what is coming up for each son and he will know what's on tap for the day, week, etc. My hope is that this structure will help them (and me) as we'll all know what's expected for the day.
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