Once you have determined that you do need the structure for your student that Independent Work Lists provide for your school, there are many questions to answer and decisions to make. And these decisions will be different according to ages.
Here are some tips for using Independent Work Lists With Elementary Children:
In teaching children to become diligent workers, there is much training involved. However, there comes a point in the teaching of each new task where a job becomes that child’s job. The child has been taught, and he is ready to take the diligence to the next level—responsibility.
Throughout the chore-training process, there are times in which intense training is needed to ensure that the child knows how to do the tasks that are going to be assigned. This involves a lot of working with Mom or Dad. Their modeling, instruction, patience, and encouragement will go a long way in teaching the child to complete the task fully.
This post is a continuation of the “Age Appropriate Chores Series”. You can read previous posts by clicking here.
Speaking of a sense of accomplishment and pride, we found it much more effective to actually give a child a certain chore, certain area, a certain jurisdiction rather than passing out chores each day, using a job jar, etc. What I mean by this is that we taught a child to do a chore completely, and that naturally became that child’s job.
Donna Reish, author of fifty language arts and writing books and the Raising Kids With Character seminar and blog, brings you this “chore” episode of Wondering Wednesday. This week Donna answers readers’ questions about age-appropriate chores. Donna introduces some keys to teaching children chores at all ages, including the importance of a set chore time, thorough training, and the difference between working with the child vs. the child working independently. Then she delves into various age groups and what are appropriate expectations for each one—with thorough, consistent training and follow up.
My world has changed so much in the past few years, but especially in the past two years. I went from homeschooling mom to full time self-employed mom.
I have worked at least half time for fifteen years. We put in the super (and I mean super) hard work of doing practically nothing but parenting for fifteen years. Then I was able to start writing curriculum for one publisher, speaking, etc., some while we finished homeschooling/raising our seven children. (Squeezed it in here and there like all working homeschooling mamas do!)
