Disappointing Results

Every so often my kids will turn in something that is just....pathetic. Today was one of those days. They've been working together on a webquest for their ancient India unit. For a webquest to last a couple of days is pretty long. One of the challenge assignments was to create a book telling about ancient Buddhist symbols and what they mean. They were to draw pictures and have text. Their finished products were slapped together, though it still took them 20-30 minutes to put together (Amazing how much time these things take!). When they turned them in my heart sank. They were pretty bad. I asked them what grade they would give themselves. Denver gave himself a "C" and Aurora gave herself a "B". Hm.

In the ideal teaching world, I would be previewing everything the kids do and going over it with them ahead of time, clarifying expectations and answering questions. In the rough and tumble of homeschooling with the management of 7+ classes for 2 kids, that just doesn't happen. If I had guided them through this project, I could have given them an example of what I had in mind for a book, or even just done a pretalk "What makes a good book?" Instead, this turned into a learning experience for me and we did it as a post-talk. "How could this be nicer? What do you think about doing this? You could have done this."

The kids were embarrassed with their work too. When I said, "What if I turned this in with your report cards as a sample of your work?" Aurora replied, "It would be better." So one of the downfalls of homeschooling can be that only a few people see their work so they get lazy and sloppy. My vigilance could help correct this in part. So should I have made them do them over--to their ability level this time??