The other night I was tossing and turning at 2am because of the realization that comes to me every year around April; that we have been getting up and hitting the books every morning for 7 months and we aren't even close to finishing school for the year. While some subjects are completed, the workbooks thrown in the trash, others are only 1/2 way completed.
At this point, no child will finish by the beginning of June, Mary has to catch up in spelling, Maggie just took her 2nd quarter math test, Charlie just finished his book report for 2nd quarter (we had to start the whole Faith and Freedom reader series over again), and Timmy needs to basically cover all the K phonics and math again.
Instead of agonizing over it and becoming angry that July and August will again consist of sitting inside every morning supervising the little slackers (Maggie was supposed to do 2 pages of math each day), I thought of an incentive for them to pick up the pace: tie their finishing to something they want to do but I don't mind missing. I presented my plan at dinner the other night. "I will call Miss Lisa and schedule each of you to start riding lessons as soon as you finish all your subjects for the year." While there were moans and groans, Maggie then finished her phonics workbook and test in 2 days.
Summer will officially be here before I know it, filled with swimming lessons, sailing camp, sleep-away camp, piano lessons, and trips to the lake. A little push so we can do those things without the extra burden of book reports and spelling tests hopefully will do the trick.
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My mom always used books. She would buy a shelf full of novels that would interest us, and each time we turned in a completed subject we would get a book. Worked great!
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