Finding enough time to get her Chinese homework done during school week has always been a problem for my daughter. She has a very busy schedule which does not leave a whole lot of available time in evenings.
The textbook we are using has a strong emphasize in homework assignments. Even though we have eliminated some homework that appears to be not so helpful, the weekly assignment may require more than 5 hours in total to finish. She simply does not have that much time during the week, and I did not want her to cram everything during one weekend day either.
So, now we are trying a more flexible schedule. After last week's lesson, she still had some homework left uncompleted. We continued on with today's lesson, which is really the second half of one lesson in the book. She will spend this week doing today's homework assignment. Then, we may take a break next week in lessons so she could catch up with all that were left in homework.
Since most of the lessons in the textbook takes two weeks to complete, it is probably natural for us to use three weeks in this fashion. It will slow down our pace, but it is better than not completing the homework, some of which are actually very helpful exercises. Besides, going back to finish earlier homework assignments may be a good review session by itself!
Showing posts with label scheduling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scheduling. Show all posts
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Resuming Classes
When we took a mini break for our Chinese school in late July, my daughter was busy with her fourth-grade school and swimming. Her summer swimming season ended in early August. That was when we had actually resumed the Chinese school also.
During the last few weeks, however, she has had plenty of homework from school, which took up quite a bit of her evening time at home. We were forced to adapt a much slower pace with the Chinese schooling, in which we cover a weekly lesson in two weeks instead of one. This allows her more time to finish the Chinese homework before we start a new lesson. We figure that it is better to do this way instead of trying to maintain a schedule and rush the lessons.
She is now in the middle of three-week "off-track" where she has no school and therefore no school homework. But on the other hand, her Fall soccer season has just got started. We will see if we can get back to the regular schedule.
During the last few weeks, however, she has had plenty of homework from school, which took up quite a bit of her evening time at home. We were forced to adapt a much slower pace with the Chinese schooling, in which we cover a weekly lesson in two weeks instead of one. This allows her more time to finish the Chinese homework before we start a new lesson. We figure that it is better to do this way instead of trying to maintain a schedule and rush the lessons.
She is now in the middle of three-week "off-track" where she has no school and therefore no school homework. But on the other hand, her Fall soccer season has just got started. We will see if we can get back to the regular schedule.
Monday, July 16, 2007
A Mini Summer Break
We had thought that we could just continue on through the summer with our classes, but the dog days are not that easy to handle. With the hot weather and my daughter's swimming meet and other activities, she is pretty worn out on Sundays. The last couple of classes we had were not as smooth as we had hoped. With a camping trip coming up next weekend, we decided to take a mini-break for a couple of weeks and then resume by the end of the month.
Taking a break is a fairly significant schedule relief for my daughter. It's not just that she doesn't have to have a class on Sunday. It's also that she doesn't have to worry about Chinese home work for a couple of weeks. With her new school year (4th grade!) already started (school homework!) and her swimming going full-steam, it is a nice break indeed.
Taking a break is a fairly significant schedule relief for my daughter. It's not just that she doesn't have to have a class on Sunday. It's also that she doesn't have to worry about Chinese home work for a couple of weeks. With her new school year (4th grade!) already started (school homework!) and her swimming going full-steam, it is a nice break indeed.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
No Class This Weekend
This is a busy weekend for us. My daughter's spring soccer season came to an end. we had the season finale game in the morning and a team party in the afternoon.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. We will go to see the musical, Pirates of Penzance. My daughter is doing the same musical in her school and very excited about it. It's nice to get to see a professional production of the same show while she is doing her school production.
It's always a great advantage of home schooling that we can take a weekend off when we need to. On the other hand, we have also decided to not having any long summer breaks like the local schools do. We will continue on with our classes throughout summer as usual, taking occasional breaks when we need to.
With the pace we are doing, we could catch up with her grade level within another year. That is, by the time she starts 5th grade in her regular school, next year in the Fall, we could be starting the 5th grade Chinese textbook as well. This prospect is already having my daughter excited. Hopefully it will keep her motivated as a nice goal to achieve.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. We will go to see the musical, Pirates of Penzance. My daughter is doing the same musical in her school and very excited about it. It's nice to get to see a professional production of the same show while she is doing her school production.
It's always a great advantage of home schooling that we can take a weekend off when we need to. On the other hand, we have also decided to not having any long summer breaks like the local schools do. We will continue on with our classes throughout summer as usual, taking occasional breaks when we need to.
With the pace we are doing, we could catch up with her grade level within another year. That is, by the time she starts 5th grade in her regular school, next year in the Fall, we could be starting the 5th grade Chinese textbook as well. This prospect is already having my daughter excited. Hopefully it will keep her motivated as a nice goal to achieve.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Sick Day
My daughter is under the weather today so we skip the week. It's nice to be able to do that thanks to the flexibility of home schooling.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
School Today, Ski Tomorrow
We plan to go ski tomorrow, so we had our class today, on a Saturday, instead. My daughter did a good job in finishing last week's homework yesterday. She had to rush it because of the schedule change. But ski is a powerful incentive too. :)
It turns out that we had a fairly short class, a little over an hour. We went through the lesson fairly quickly and skipped the explanation of the reading material all together. She claimed that she understood everything in the reading material already. It was an easy piece and her comprehension was indeed improving. So, why not cut the class short.
It turns out that we had a fairly short class, a little over an hour. We went through the lesson fairly quickly and skipped the explanation of the reading material all together. She claimed that she understood everything in the reading material already. It was an easy piece and her comprehension was indeed improving. So, why not cut the class short.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
No Class This Week
It's the Superbowl Sunday, so naturally we will just DVR the game and go skiing! I am not sure if my daughter is more excited about going skiing or getting to skip the Chinese class for a week. Maybe both?
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Our First Class!
We officially opened our home school this morning at 10:30. There was no fanfare we just went right into our first lesson.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
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