New Strategies

After having a rough start to the week, Matt and I implemented some new "strategies" today to help with school.

I have been having a hard time keeping Megan in her chair, from dancing, from getting up at random times, rolling eyes, being disrespectful, etc. I felt that we were wasting a lot of time and I was getting frustrated with it all. School should not take us all day!

After talking with a fellow mom about what was going on, she mentioned some consequences for Megan. The one she mentioned was that Megan should go to bed earlier. I loved it!

So after discussing this with Matt, these are our new rules. 1. When you do something you are not supposed to do (the above mentioned activities), you will get one check. One check means that you are going to go to bed 5 minutes earlier than usual. You can get up to 6 checks (go to bed 1/2 hour earlier). 2. If you get a 7th check, you will lose time to read chapter books before you go to sleep. 3. If you get 8 checks, you lose storytime with mom and dad at bedtime. 5. If you get 9 or more checks, you will continue to lose 5 minutes off of bedtime.

Today Megan ended up with 4 checks, so she started to get ready for bed at 8:10.

But besides this, school went great today. I just think I need to be a little bit harder on her and not let her by with so much. We started school at 9:15 this morning and we started with our Bible lesson. Courtney joined us and Christian colored, so everything went well. I told the girls the new rules and they were very well behaved. I didn't have any trouble with Megan until about 11 am. We got all of our lessons done except for reading. (Courtney even told me tonight that she wants us to wait to do our Bible lesson until she gets home from preschool tomorrow, so she can join us again!)

Reading is another whole other story! I love our curriculum we are using, but the amount of reading is hard to keep up on. I may just be having a hard time this week. Every day as part of the curriculum, I read her a chapter out of a chapter book and she reads me a chapter out of another book. The problem is that this usually takes 30-45 minutes just to read and we still have 6 other subjects to do.

The chapter book I am reading to her now is called "The Door in the Wall" and it is about a boy in the 1300's, so there are many new vocabulary words that we need to learn plus it takes place in a castle and a monastary, so we need some background information on the time period and setting. This all takes awhile, but I admit, it's my favorite book so far! We have two more chapters to read in this book (I am behind one lesson because I ran out of time yesterday), but I think that equals about 30 pages. We are supposed to finish this book tomorrow.

The book she is reading me is called "The House on Walenska Street." The problem with this book this week is that we lost it. Somehow it was on the floor and when we picked up books on Tuesday, it got put on Courtney's bookshelf. We finally found it today, but now we are 4 lessons behind. YIKES!! We are supposed to finish the book tomorrow, but we haven't read it all week. I think we have to read about 50 pages to finish it.

When are we going to finish these books?? We will have to this weekend. I am caught up on everything else for the week, I just need to catch up on the reading. On Monday, we will start two new books.

I usually don't mind getting a little behind on Thursday or Friday, but it was really frustrating this week when I was behind already on Monday! Thanks to Christian being sick and having to go back to the doctor, I didn't get any school done on Monday and just got my whole schedule off. During the week, I can usually let things slide a little bit and if I'm behind on anything, I can catch up on Friday. Even though I have 4 day lesson plans, I have never gotten everything done in 4 days! But it's nice to have that 5th day at the END of the week, not the beginning!

As much as I love this curriculum, I don't know if I can do it for two kids next year. I've been looking around at other curriculums and just haven't ran across any that I really like or that I think will work with my kids. I may need to get at least one subject that the girls can do independently, just to save my sanity. I know Megan would not like that, but it may be what needs to happen.

Matt and I keep telling ourselves that this is our experiment year with homeschooling. We know we can always send them back to public school, but we really want to give this a good try! The more horror stories I hear lately of public schools, it almost makes me want to get a job so we can afford private schools (if it comes to that). I have talked to so many frustrated parents lately...but that's another story too.