I was so exhausted last night. It seems I'm exhausted every night. Around 8:30 P.M. I was so very ready to head for bed. Instead, I headed for the local coffeehouse to enjoy music by Boheme and a friend of ours. They got started much too late, and only played for an hour, but I think they enjoyed it.
I awoke this morning thinking about how I was going to structure my day. While evaluating my daily goals, I have realized that there are a couple of areas of our routine that need a bit of help...
Every day, I present each of the kids with their own daily goals sheet.
dailygoals.pdf
If you look at the pdf link (which comes up a little funky for some reason. If you know why, e-mail me and tell me how to fix it!), you will see the actual sheet Bard was given to complete yesterday. The first thing they have to do each morning is, of course, their morning goals. Usually they do alright with this, though Monet drags his feet and whines quite a bit, it takes a while for Edison to get started, and Bard usually isn't even UP in the morning. Still, they get it done without much "encouraging" from me. This has taken many, many, many months of practice to get it to this stage in the routine.
Next is Household Goals. While I try to have the kids do their goals in order, household goals are the exception. I have decided that it's much more important to get their academics done than to clean house. Do I like it that way? Absolutely not. It's very frustrating for me because we have so many neighbors without phones, so they will just stop by on a whim, and then I have to clear papers, boxes, projects, etc. off of the table so we have a place to sit and chat (because my living room is my kitchen is my bedroom, is my dining room...). My hope, however, is to get our generous porch to a state where we can sit and chat there and people will never need to enter my cabin.
If I don't do the Household Goals that way, it will be afternoon before we get to academics. I know, I know...we should just get up earlier. That is SO hard for me! While, most mornings, I'm up by 7:30, it's the only time of the day I have to write, think, and prepare. So I don't wake the children most days...I let them awake on their own schedule. The benefits and banes of homeschooling...
Another thing I notice is that there are a few things every day that simply don't get done. I'm embarrassed to admit what they are. But, looking at Bard's Daily Goals, I see everything but the following checked...
Do you know who's not meeting their daily goals?
MOM!!!
It's just that I get so doggone busy doing the other things that need to be done...staining the deck, making or going out to pick up meals, feeding Baby, cleaning up spills and other can't-wait messes...How in the world can I add another hundred hours to my day???
The problem in this is that each of the children get to choose a reward for completing all of their daily goals. Now, they can work hard all day, complete everything within their power and learn an awful lot, but if they can't get their time in with Mom, their daily goals arent' reached and the goals aren't given. I'm trying to think of a way to hand out rewards on some kind of a scale.
I'll have to think on it...
