Plan in Action

So here's how it's all going, four weeks into our new school year.


In the first place, it's much harder to do school in the summer months here than it was in SC. Back there we tended to spend the months of July and August (oh, and June and probably even May...and September, too) just wilting from the heat, and since we were inside most of the time anyway, I felt we might as well do schoolwork. Here, I felt like we still needed to get back into the swing of things somewhat and not take all summer off, but there's so much more to do, and we can even do some of it outside, here where they call 90 degrees a heat wave. I joke with Dave that when it gets down to 90 in the summer in Lexington, the meteorologists talk about a cool front. I'm only partly joking - I think that really happened once. To be fair, there have been some genuine scorchers - hot is hot, no matter where you are. But until the past couple weeks, it really hadn't been that bad, and the kids have been going to a very cool program one of the local park districts has, where they go for the morning (all of them except Scarlett, of course), and enjoy outdoor games and crafts. I'm not turning that down so we can stay inside and do math! They also have quite a few more neighborhood friends here than they ever have, so it's too much to ask them to slave away, chained to desks, when friends come to call. At least, that's what they tell me.


So we've had an adjusted schedule in which we've tried to fit some things in the afternoon, when it genuinely is pretty hot and everyone wants to be inside. They don't particularly want to be doing schoolwork, however, and it's made me think that we might have taken too big a chunk off in June and early July. It was only about six weeks, but trying to get them back into things has been something of a struggle. It seems they forgot that this is just what they have to do at this point in their lives. I know this is where my dear father might insert a comment about how kids should enjoy the "lazy, hazy days of summer." Well, as far as I know, he's never mentioned any tips for 1.) how mothers are supposed to enjoy these days, with bored kids bouncing off the walls, or 2. how to keep everyone from forgetting everything they learned the previous year. So, unless he has suggestions on those two points, he need not comment. :-) But anyway, I'm working on reminding everyone that this is just life, and we can make it as fun as they would like to make it, without, as one child began to put it, without doing away with things like grammar altogether.



Another thing we're struggling with, however, is the first point of my last post - chores. We have a very large white board in the hallway upstairs, on which I listed all the things that have to be done on a given day to keep the household running - grouped by morning, afternoon, and evening. Then I put their initials beside the chores I want them to do, asking them to write their initials on the other side when they complete them. On the right-hand side of the board, I listed a summary of what each child is responsible for. I thought this was pretty straight-forward, but it hasn't been working very well. For the first couple weeks, I felt like I was doing twice as much work, because I was now dragging them along each and every step of the way, directing them, hounding them, all but taking their hands and walking them through each step. Then for the next week, I tried giving them one warning each day, then just doing the chores myself, then having them do as many of MY chores as they could that Saturday, in order to illustrate the point. It didn't seem to work, and just made for a horrible Saturday, which brings me to one of my main problems - I don't quite know what to do when they don't do the work. When I try getting really tough about this, I feel like I'm just punishing them all the time, or if I try to put a positive spin on it, I feel like I'm dangling a carrot a carrot on a stick. In either case, the chores might get done, but not very well, and I've never been very sure what to do about that, because I'm never quite sure if my expectations are reasonable. So...the bottom line is we're still working through this one. They are doing basic chores for themselves, but I haven't yet struck on how to give them responsibilities for the entire household.



As to the second point, which was prioritizing Bible study, I feel like that's been going fairly well. We've been going through the Veritas Press Bible cards, starting with Creation, and I really like them. I think the kids do, as well. Pretty soon I plan to start doing catechism questions with them again, which is something we do periodically, but not always consistently. Still, they all know the basic ones, and those will stick with them a long time. (My sisters probably experience the same thing I do when they hear questions like, "What does it mean to repent?," and a voice in their head automatically says, "It means to change your mind.") If I can get through the whole set of questions I have, they should have a decent understanding of the faith. The older ones are also doing Bible quizzing this year, and I'm super excited about that. I plan to explain it more later, but the upshot is that it will provide us with a way to saturate them with Scripture, and there are no downsides to that.


The third point was better planning, and I think I've been as successful with that as I could hope to be. Aimee thinks I could be better organized, bless her - she didn't know me when I lived by lists and organization, and she doesn't realize that now, extreme organization would mean a loss of flexibility and spontaneity in her life. That's if it were even possible, which, with just a baby alone, it isn't (see post on "Mothering Through Breastfeeding!"), and adding three boys and their different learning styles to the mix makes it even less likely. So if she can find a way to schedule her every minute when she has a family, good for her. But I for one find it both too difficult on the one hand, and not all that desirable on the other. Flexibility means that we can take an idea and run with it, rather than being stuck to only doing a certain thing on a certain day, and it means we can forgive ourselves when we get somewhat "off-track." I did, however, write out a rough sketch of what I wanted to accomplish for the first six weeks, week by week, and that's been going pretty well. The tricky thing for me is keeping track of what three kids are doing throughout the day, and whether they're getting to the important subjects, as well as the "fun" ones. So this past week, instead of letting them choose which subject at any given time (yeah, I know - mean Mom), I decreed that we were going to go through them in alphabetical order. Sometimes this means everyone is one the same subject, and sometimes I make minor adjustments when I need them to be on the same subject, but it doesn't matter if they aren't - it just seems to help that I know each one is going down the list of things they need to do. If they don't get through all the subjects in one day, we start where each one left off and go from there. I think that went rather well, and I intend to keep it up, although one of my children complained that it seemed as though we were doing art all the time this week. Even though I know better than to respond emotionally, I looked at said child incredulously, and said, "Aren't you the one who usually complains that we never do art? Are you serious?" Methinks said child just doesn't like not being completely in charge.

As to point number four, I'm going to break that up into segments, or this post would be even more incredibly too long!