That Week When I Stopped Naming the Weeks (Week 4)

So forgive me.  I'm just not creative enough to keep on naming every week something different and cute.  So this is the week when I stopped naming the weeks.

This week was... hmmm.... well it was tiring.  It's sinking in that I'm going to be doing this (homeschooling) every day of every week.  With not that many breaks.  Now I knew this at some level.  Obivously I'm going to be doing this every day of every week.  But I don't think I really realized that it was going to be EVERY day of EVERY week with little break.  And I'm starting to feel it in my bones.

Scott had to have a sit down talk with the kids this week to remind them that bad attitudes were not permissible at their former school and they aren't permissible at home either.  There were several days that I had to "fight" bad attitudes for most of the day, and that is just plain exhausting.  Thankfully, Friday was a good day with every one cooperating and in a pleasant mood.  Especially for one of my kids, this will be an on-going battle.  I'm not above handing out extra work to discipline a bad attitude.

I'm starting to realize that my kids aren't ready to work completely on their own yet. I'm not talking

about working independently from a task list.  I'm talking about the kids being given an assignment (that they understand) and working on it by themselves.  Kids are getting frustrated and overwhelmed as well as getting distracted and spacing out.  This is unfortunate, because I was trusting them to do some of their work by themselves so that I could work with another kid at the same time.  There is 3 of them and only 1 of me.  

This may mean that my days get longer as I have to work one-on-one more often with my kids.  *sigh* Hopefully this will be a temporary deal.  My goal is for my kids to work mostly independently (as they get older) with self-direction and discipline.

Our days aren't only serious, by the way.  There is lots of snickering and laughing through the day.  For example, here are two pictures of Jack telling us some funny story this week.

 And we also perform stupid human tricks. 

Of course we also get lots of work done.  Here is Cade, working on Essentials grammar work for Classical Conversations.

 

And Claire reading...

 

And Jack working on math...

 

One of the activities the kids can work on when they don't have work they can do alone (and I'm working with one of their siblings) is to write.  Write stories, write letters to friends, write anything.  Here is an example of Claire's writing...

 

And finally, a funny graphic that is close to the truth.  Except in the last square on the bottom right, I'd also be pictured pulling out my hair while simultaneously smiling genuinely at my kids.