Homeschooling a newly adopted older child
Someone had posted a question on one of the adoption-homeschooling groups I'm in, asking about how to integrate a new, older child into a homeschool routine, especially if there were already children who were not yet independent learners in the home. Now, I have a little bit of experience with this. I was going to just answer on the post, but decided that a. it was going to be really long, far to long for a mere comment, and b. there might be other people out there who were interested in my answer. So, for those of you who don't homeschool or don't have newly home older adopted children, you can either read along because you're curious, or come back tomorrow, because by then, maybe I will have sorted through the vacation pictures.
The trick to this particular scenario is that there are suddenly so many children who need your help and attention all at the same time. I have never felt so stretched as when I was trying to teach a new child(ren) plus all the other children who still needed my help. There just never seemed to be enough time to do anything. We survived, and you can, too.
There were two keys to survival: grouping children together as much as possible and significantly detailed schedules. I've had two groups of children when we've lived through this specific scenario. The first time through, the younger group was pretty young, and I had a bunch of preschool/very early elementary school types. This was the easier instance. The second time, I had mid-grade schoolers who were doing a bit more academic-wise, combined with two new older children of vastly different abilities. This was far tougher, and I still have moments of wondering if I've really figured it out.
Let's walk through the first rodeo, when H. came home. H. was 9, and significantly more delayed and trauma-affected than we even dreamed of. I also had G. and L. who were 3/4-ish and K. who was 6, though functionally two years younger than that. (Writing that out, I realize how easy this would seem to me now... it's all in your perspective.) I also had TM and D. who were late grade school, and around 9 or 10. P. was 11 or 12 years old and also in late grade school. A. was in high school, B. was finishing high school. My high schoolers are fairly independent, so don't play into this scenario.
I've always had the schedule of spending intentional time with the youngest child(ren) first before doing the more academic school work with the older children. It was no different with H. joining us. When we had brought her home the spring before, I had to scrap all of my plans I made for her before we had met her. They were incredibly inappropriate for the level at which she was actually learning. Discovering she was at about a preschool level actually made things easier since I had so many functional preschoolers already. I just spent the first 45 minutes or so doing preschool with the four of them. (My older children all knew to get out their schoolbooks and get started while they waited. If they got stuck, they could ask me when I had a moment, or wait until it was their turn for me to help them.) For two years I did my own version of Five in a Row. (All this means is that I used some of their suggestions, and then used what I wanted and made the rest up. Kind of how I create most of our curricula.) This worked well. It was right on target for G., L., and K., and wasn't too far beyond H.'s grasp. Reading the same book to her five days in a row was good, as it helped with comprehension. She was so lost for those first two years, that anything would have been beyond her, really. At least this way she was doing what everyone else was. After our preschool time, I would pull out a couple of preschool boxes for the younger set to entertain themselves with, while I worked on math and grammar with the middle group. Finally, at the end of our morning, we did all together whatever unit study we were working on.
This actually didn't look terribly different from how I'd always done school with a wide variety of ages. H. may have been 9, turning 10, but preschool... reading books, playing, doing a lot of hands-on exploring were just what she needed. It was helpful that I had three built-in guides whom she could watch and imitate.
Life went along pretty much in the same vane until two a half years ago when we brought R. and Y. home. Suddenly, I had 9 children being homeschooled. P. was in high school, TM and D. were in junior high, H. was 13, but doing kindergarten level work, K. was 9 and in 3rd-ish grade, while G. and L. were 6 and in 1st grade. None of the youngest four were reading independently, and all still needed significant help with just about everything. Early elementary is a very labor intensive age to teach. How on earth was I going to add in two girls with such vastly different abilities, neither of whom really spoke English?
Setting aside that first six months for a while, here is how I managed school starting with the first full school year. While I like schedules, I dislike rigid ones. I can never keep them, and they make me want to rebel and not follow them... even if I was the one to create them in the first place. Yet, for that school year, a rigid schedule was the only way I could figure out how to get everyone in. It was a rotating schedule that had me working with one child while the others each had certain things they were to do. For instance, while I was working with R., one child would be playing with the first activity box I had set out, another would be playing with the second activity box I had set out, another had free choice of the A list of activities, and the last child would have free choice of the B list of activities. I had a visual timer so everyone could see how much time we had for each segment. When the timer went off, everyone traded what they did, switching activities along the way. I never could keep it all straight, and had to have the schedule in front of me at all time. While we were doing this, TM and D. worked on math and grammar, coming upstairs to ask questions as needed. I could cycle through everyone in 2 hours and 15 minutes, with each child working with me for between 15 and 25 minutes depending on the child. At the end of the morning, the boys would join us, and we would do our unit study as usual.
It was crazy. Crazy and totally out of our ordinary kind of schedule. It worked for that particular season, though. The new girls needed more structure. The not-new children needed to know that they each had their own special time with me. I needed to know I wasn't going to accidentally skip someone. That small bit of time wasn't really adequate for everything I wanted to get through with each child, but we stuck to the basics, and everyone survived.
Last year, we were able to loosen up some. No longer did we have to stick to such a strict schedule, and I was able to have more than one child working on something on their own. The activity boxes were less needed, and less appropriate as each of the children gained skills. I learned how to give R. the first time slot of the morning, and then keep her right next to me doing more independent play with an activity box. Being right next to me meant I could keep an eye on what she was doing, and correct and encourage as necessary. Y. became almost indistinguishable in school work from her siblings. The most important thing she and I did together was reading, because I could use that to work on pronunciation and vocabulary.
This year I see children doing more independent work at the same time, while I act as resource and question person. R. will still get that first time slot, and continue to sit next me during the morning. At least that is how it looks in my head; I have yet to see what it looks like on paper as I schedule it out.
So those are the day-to-day details, but there is another important piece to all of this. The idea you have to rush, and that time is against you. It's not and you don't. The idea we have to have our children 'caught up' by a certain age, by a certain grade, in a certain amount of time is nonsense. There is no time limit. You have the time you need to give your child a solid base from which to grow and learn. Start where they are and take the time you and your child need to go from there Besides, learning is not a purely linear activity. Children (and adults) learn in spits and starts. Some periods will seem as though no progress is being made, and possibly no more progress will ever be made, while at others, the leaps and growth will astonish you. There is no way to predict when these jags will occur.
There are some specific things I would like a new parent of an older adoptee to know in regards to homeschooling, though.
1. Take it slow. I barely did anything with any of my girls for the first 6 to 9 months. There is just so much change, so much to take in, so much trauma, that academic learning really needs to take a back seat, in my opinion. I know this makes people really uncomfortable. Sure, they would see their siblings doing school work, and I had some easy, colorful workbooks for them so they could play along, but I didn't care if or how they did them, any more than I would care how my 2yo would do a workbook handed to her for the same reason. Instead, I let them watch what we were doing, showed a lot of Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD's, had toys and games and puzzles they could play with, had activity boxes they could play with, sensory activities, or just let them sit and watch. If a child was particularly needy, sometimes we just wouldn't have "school" that day. For that first half year or so, the needs of the new child always came first, just as a new baby's needs would. I had learned from homeschooling so many years with infants, that I wasn't ruining my older children by tending to the baby, they still learned. You can always catch up in a textbook. There is nothing magical about them.
2. You do not have to teach your child English. Really, truly, you do not need to do this. These children are living in an immersive environment in English. They will learn it. I have had a non-English speaking adult living in my home who learned English without me teaching her. I have had older children living in my English speaking home who learned English without my teaching them. They learn English because they cannot help themselves. Of course, there are things that you can do to help, but once again, it is very much like having a baby and toddler around. You spend your days narrating your life, using simpler vocabulary, repeating words, just as you would for a young child. You read picture book after picture book after picture book, looking at the pictures and describing what you see. Yes, even for an older child. Chances are they missed moments like this anyway, and it's a way to meet those missed moments.
3. Do your best. Let's be frank. You are not going to be able to do it all. I'm not going to be able to do it all. There will be gaps. There will be things missed. This is just the way life is. (Traditional school cannot do it all, either. Students in those settings will also have gaps and things that are missed.) There is no use trying to kill yourself by trying to do it all. All that will happen is that your children will become angry and uncooperative, and you will become burned out. These are not good things. They can really take the joy out of learning together. All that you can do on any given day, at any given moment, is your best. Some days that best is pretty darn good, other days, you have to wonder what the worst would look like if this is the best. It happens to all of us. So leave behind some idealized vision of what homeschooling looks like, what you children should be able to do and how they should behave, and instead, embrace what you have right in front of you. Your children will only be these ages once, don't waste it waiting for perfect.
The trick to this particular scenario is that there are suddenly so many children who need your help and attention all at the same time. I have never felt so stretched as when I was trying to teach a new child(ren) plus all the other children who still needed my help. There just never seemed to be enough time to do anything. We survived, and you can, too.
There were two keys to survival: grouping children together as much as possible and significantly detailed schedules. I've had two groups of children when we've lived through this specific scenario. The first time through, the younger group was pretty young, and I had a bunch of preschool/very early elementary school types. This was the easier instance. The second time, I had mid-grade schoolers who were doing a bit more academic-wise, combined with two new older children of vastly different abilities. This was far tougher, and I still have moments of wondering if I've really figured it out.
Let's walk through the first rodeo, when H. came home. H. was 9, and significantly more delayed and trauma-affected than we even dreamed of. I also had G. and L. who were 3/4-ish and K. who was 6, though functionally two years younger than that. (Writing that out, I realize how easy this would seem to me now... it's all in your perspective.) I also had TM and D. who were late grade school, and around 9 or 10. P. was 11 or 12 years old and also in late grade school. A. was in high school, B. was finishing high school. My high schoolers are fairly independent, so don't play into this scenario.
I've always had the schedule of spending intentional time with the youngest child(ren) first before doing the more academic school work with the older children. It was no different with H. joining us. When we had brought her home the spring before, I had to scrap all of my plans I made for her before we had met her. They were incredibly inappropriate for the level at which she was actually learning. Discovering she was at about a preschool level actually made things easier since I had so many functional preschoolers already. I just spent the first 45 minutes or so doing preschool with the four of them. (My older children all knew to get out their schoolbooks and get started while they waited. If they got stuck, they could ask me when I had a moment, or wait until it was their turn for me to help them.) For two years I did my own version of Five in a Row. (All this means is that I used some of their suggestions, and then used what I wanted and made the rest up. Kind of how I create most of our curricula.) This worked well. It was right on target for G., L., and K., and wasn't too far beyond H.'s grasp. Reading the same book to her five days in a row was good, as it helped with comprehension. She was so lost for those first two years, that anything would have been beyond her, really. At least this way she was doing what everyone else was. After our preschool time, I would pull out a couple of preschool boxes for the younger set to entertain themselves with, while I worked on math and grammar with the middle group. Finally, at the end of our morning, we did all together whatever unit study we were working on.
This actually didn't look terribly different from how I'd always done school with a wide variety of ages. H. may have been 9, turning 10, but preschool... reading books, playing, doing a lot of hands-on exploring were just what she needed. It was helpful that I had three built-in guides whom she could watch and imitate.
Life went along pretty much in the same vane until two a half years ago when we brought R. and Y. home. Suddenly, I had 9 children being homeschooled. P. was in high school, TM and D. were in junior high, H. was 13, but doing kindergarten level work, K. was 9 and in 3rd-ish grade, while G. and L. were 6 and in 1st grade. None of the youngest four were reading independently, and all still needed significant help with just about everything. Early elementary is a very labor intensive age to teach. How on earth was I going to add in two girls with such vastly different abilities, neither of whom really spoke English?
Setting aside that first six months for a while, here is how I managed school starting with the first full school year. While I like schedules, I dislike rigid ones. I can never keep them, and they make me want to rebel and not follow them... even if I was the one to create them in the first place. Yet, for that school year, a rigid schedule was the only way I could figure out how to get everyone in. It was a rotating schedule that had me working with one child while the others each had certain things they were to do. For instance, while I was working with R., one child would be playing with the first activity box I had set out, another would be playing with the second activity box I had set out, another had free choice of the A list of activities, and the last child would have free choice of the B list of activities. I had a visual timer so everyone could see how much time we had for each segment. When the timer went off, everyone traded what they did, switching activities along the way. I never could keep it all straight, and had to have the schedule in front of me at all time. While we were doing this, TM and D. worked on math and grammar, coming upstairs to ask questions as needed. I could cycle through everyone in 2 hours and 15 minutes, with each child working with me for between 15 and 25 minutes depending on the child. At the end of the morning, the boys would join us, and we would do our unit study as usual.
It was crazy. Crazy and totally out of our ordinary kind of schedule. It worked for that particular season, though. The new girls needed more structure. The not-new children needed to know that they each had their own special time with me. I needed to know I wasn't going to accidentally skip someone. That small bit of time wasn't really adequate for everything I wanted to get through with each child, but we stuck to the basics, and everyone survived.
Last year, we were able to loosen up some. No longer did we have to stick to such a strict schedule, and I was able to have more than one child working on something on their own. The activity boxes were less needed, and less appropriate as each of the children gained skills. I learned how to give R. the first time slot of the morning, and then keep her right next to me doing more independent play with an activity box. Being right next to me meant I could keep an eye on what she was doing, and correct and encourage as necessary. Y. became almost indistinguishable in school work from her siblings. The most important thing she and I did together was reading, because I could use that to work on pronunciation and vocabulary.
This year I see children doing more independent work at the same time, while I act as resource and question person. R. will still get that first time slot, and continue to sit next me during the morning. At least that is how it looks in my head; I have yet to see what it looks like on paper as I schedule it out.
So those are the day-to-day details, but there is another important piece to all of this. The idea you have to rush, and that time is against you. It's not and you don't. The idea we have to have our children 'caught up' by a certain age, by a certain grade, in a certain amount of time is nonsense. There is no time limit. You have the time you need to give your child a solid base from which to grow and learn. Start where they are and take the time you and your child need to go from there Besides, learning is not a purely linear activity. Children (and adults) learn in spits and starts. Some periods will seem as though no progress is being made, and possibly no more progress will ever be made, while at others, the leaps and growth will astonish you. There is no way to predict when these jags will occur.
There are some specific things I would like a new parent of an older adoptee to know in regards to homeschooling, though.
1. Take it slow. I barely did anything with any of my girls for the first 6 to 9 months. There is just so much change, so much to take in, so much trauma, that academic learning really needs to take a back seat, in my opinion. I know this makes people really uncomfortable. Sure, they would see their siblings doing school work, and I had some easy, colorful workbooks for them so they could play along, but I didn't care if or how they did them, any more than I would care how my 2yo would do a workbook handed to her for the same reason. Instead, I let them watch what we were doing, showed a lot of Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD's, had toys and games and puzzles they could play with, had activity boxes they could play with, sensory activities, or just let them sit and watch. If a child was particularly needy, sometimes we just wouldn't have "school" that day. For that first half year or so, the needs of the new child always came first, just as a new baby's needs would. I had learned from homeschooling so many years with infants, that I wasn't ruining my older children by tending to the baby, they still learned. You can always catch up in a textbook. There is nothing magical about them.
2. You do not have to teach your child English. Really, truly, you do not need to do this. These children are living in an immersive environment in English. They will learn it. I have had a non-English speaking adult living in my home who learned English without me teaching her. I have had older children living in my English speaking home who learned English without my teaching them. They learn English because they cannot help themselves. Of course, there are things that you can do to help, but once again, it is very much like having a baby and toddler around. You spend your days narrating your life, using simpler vocabulary, repeating words, just as you would for a young child. You read picture book after picture book after picture book, looking at the pictures and describing what you see. Yes, even for an older child. Chances are they missed moments like this anyway, and it's a way to meet those missed moments.
3. Do your best. Let's be frank. You are not going to be able to do it all. I'm not going to be able to do it all. There will be gaps. There will be things missed. This is just the way life is. (Traditional school cannot do it all, either. Students in those settings will also have gaps and things that are missed.) There is no use trying to kill yourself by trying to do it all. All that will happen is that your children will become angry and uncooperative, and you will become burned out. These are not good things. They can really take the joy out of learning together. All that you can do on any given day, at any given moment, is your best. Some days that best is pretty darn good, other days, you have to wonder what the worst would look like if this is the best. It happens to all of us. So leave behind some idealized vision of what homeschooling looks like, what you children should be able to do and how they should behave, and instead, embrace what you have right in front of you. Your children will only be these ages once, don't waste it waiting for perfect.
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