What I love about homeschooling is that each child can learn at his own pace. We started out homeschooling our now grown girls when they were beginning the 6th and 10th grades. That story has lots of blogs for another day. But now we are teaching our 7 and 3 year old boys. Almost 2 years ago we bought “The Story of the World” by Susan Wise Bauer (www.susanwisebauer.com) for two reasons: 1) I loved her book with her mother, “The Well Trained Mind” for our girls through the high school years and 2) Everyone just raved about how great it is. Well I couldn’t get our son, then 6, to get one thing out of the stories or activities. So I stored it away on the book shelf and forgot about it. We read children novels on historic people and that was the gist of history while he was 6, then at 7 I purchased Scholastic interactive activity books on American History, which is mostly cut, color and paste activities with a little history built in. As his 7th year is coming to a close, I’m getting concerned about his lack of history so Sunday at church I asked a friend what she did for history – “The Story of the World” she quickly replies. “My kids just love the stories.” I felt a little discouraged, knowing I had tried this and couldn’t get my child to listen, but I pulled it back out and tried it again. Well, what a difference 18-20 months makes in a child’s life. Not only will he listen to the stories, but he can’t wait to hear what is happening next. Most importantly later he seems to remember the story vividly as he retells it to his father or ask me if I remember so and so that happened in the story. This is why I love homeschooling – we can do things when they are ready and they excel greatly instead of pushing it when its required and running the risk of them hating not only the subject but learning altogether. And the advantages of having an older brother – our 3 year old listens too because he doesn’t want to be left out. Although I admit it has to be with a car or train in his had moving it around the living room floor. 🙂 So hang in there, if your child doesn’t thrive in a particular subject or even curriculum right now, wait a little and try it again. Maybe it is just the wrong time for him and not his ability at all. Hang in there and take learning at their pace.