Standards

One of the things I find both interesting and challenging about homeschooling is figuring out when the boys' work is "good enough".  In the beginning, with Primo, I tended to expect too much from him in his lessons.  It was lucky for him that I started using the Story of the World history curriculum, which includes review questions and sample narrations for each story.  Before that, throughout most of his first grade year, I read ancient history books with him and then expected him to be able to answer very detailed questions and to write long, complex narrations.  I don't think it was much fun for him.  Once I saw how simple the SOW questions and narrations were, I dialed it way back.

These days, though, I often worry that I'm not asking enough of Primo and Radish academically.  For example, I have been allowing Radish to read and teach the history stories *instead* of writing narrations.  And I have Primo doing work from a number of different sources, but not doing too much in-depth reading, research, or writing.  I'm not sure if this next thing is a good example, but on Wednesday (our last day of lessons before taking an extended break), I asked the boys to collaborate on a timeline of early exploration of the New World.  Granted, this was the last lesson of the morning, on the last morning of lessons before the break.  But what they handed me was written using just a couple of sources, and included only a few of the people I thought they'd write about.  I accepted it at the time-- they were so touchingly proud of themselves, they thought they had done excellent work.  When I looked over one of the books they had used, later that day, I was surprised at how much they had left out.

And that's where the challenge comes in-- were they doing appropriate work?  Should I have encouraged them to dig deeper, or was the work 'good enough'?  I know there are external 'norms' of what kids in general are supposed to be capable of at each age or grade level (educational 'standards'), but I tend to believe that ignoring these standards is one of the joys of homeschooling-- I (theoretically at least) know my own kids and what they're capable of.  I guess my hesitation comes in because I don't know if I should expect them to work at the limit of their capacity, or to do just what feels pretty comfortable and easy to them.  Hitting just the right amount of difficulty in their work is, well, difficult.