Motivating Mama.

Since we've been homeschooling, I've made out a variety of schedules and lists for the kids. We've probably tried just about everything, to get the day to go smoothly. Right now, they have a checklist of about 11 things that they have to do each day. As I mentioned last week, they've been getting better at getting these done, now that they've recovered from the fall break blues (just in time for Thanksgiving!). One day they even decided to race and see if they could get done before noon and have the rest of the day free. They got done at about 12:30 that day.

Some people might be concerned that they aren't getting in 6 hours of school time like the public school kids, but if you count the bathroom breaks, waiting in line, waiting for other kids to behave, etc. that the public school kids have to sit through, I think getting done at noon is acceptable. They start about 9:30 so that's 3 hours. I think I remember reading somewhere that in the average day, the average school kid got about 15 minutes of instructional time, so compared to that, we're doing great and the kids are thriving.

However, I have not been doing all that well with my own lists. I usually make up a list of things that I want to get accomplished each day too, then get wrapped up in school and work and ignore it. I think that I may have come up with a solution to this problem though. I've found a way to motivate myself and so far, it has worked for 3 days. You may laugh, but that's a record for me! This is what I've done. I made myself a morning routine of 11 things I want to get done before the kids start school, start a load of laundry, run the dishwasher, straighten up the house, exercise, etc. and I've told the kids that if I don't do my list, they don't have to do theirs. My deadline is 10:00 a.m. If I haven't exercised and done all the other things by 10:00 a.m., they don't have to school or chores all day and the 'no TV until the sun sets' rule is suspended as well, so they can sit on their bums all day, basically. Of course, I don't want that, so I've been doing my list faithfully for 3 days and my youngest goes to check every day at 10:00 to see if I'm done! LoL. I hope I can keep up the good work.