One of the perks of home educating is the amount of extra time you find you have. There is extra time to squeeze in activities, travel, field trips, messy art projects, and friends. There is extra time to try out new recipes with your budding chefs. There is extra time to be lazy and sleep in on cold mornings. There is also plenty of extra time to waste.
Wasting time doing nothing has been one of the most challenging aspects of home educating my children. The first couple of weeks start off grand. Assignments are done in record-setting time, there are no complaints, recess is never missed, lunch is never late, and the children are eager to please. When you fast forward to month three things aren't quite so ideal.
By the time November rolls around, the children (and the mommy) are getting a bit burned-out with the dailies - get up, eat breakfast, do schoolwork, eat lunch, do schoolwork, eat supper, go to bed, blah, blah, blah. So to change this up the children like to drag their feet, doubling or even tripling (or worse) the time it takes them to do their work. What previously took 30 minutes now takes 2 hours because one child likes to sing operatic renditions of her subtraction problems while the other wants to bring every Lego he owns to the school area and drive them loudly while the first child "attempts" to complete work. The Lego driving child doesn't like having to redo anything, whether it's a simple addition problem that needs to be changed by one number or a letter that was improperly formed. I have repeatedly explained that God expects us to make mistakes, and that is why He gave man the knowledge to make the mighty pink eraser. Everything is drudgery and my requests cannot be completed at that time, or any other for that matter.
This is our second year of home educating our youngest, "Lego Man," and we just finished out the first calendar year of home educating our oldest, "Opera Queen." We are still trying to find sure footing as far as scheduling our breaks and finding our groove during the day. We have weeks of educational bliss followed by weeks of torture where I feel like I am Bombaloo (Sometimes I'm Bombaloo, by Rachel Vail) every single day instead of just sometimes. I have sprouted what resembles a whale's spray of gray/silver hair in the top of my head...in the last month.
We started the year planning a late fall break for the week of Thanksgiving, and it was fabulous not worrying about getting behind while I spent so much time in the kitchen. We were to return to school for two weeks before a three week Christmas break during which time we planned all sorts of fun activities. Then, oh boy. The fall crud hit hard. First Lego Man came down with a sinus infection, respiratory virus and cough. He was quite sick for two weeks, with three trips to the doctor and two antibiotics, and still it lingered. We managed to work the first week of December, and we started the second week. Two days into the week Opera Queen took ill with what we assumed was the same virus since it presented the same, so we scrapped the rest of the week and called an early Christmas break. We held off on the second visit to the doctor hoping it would get better, but that was a bad choice indeed. Five days into an antibiotic the cough was worse, there was a wheeze and shortness of breath, the fever would not stay gone, and my Opera Queen was very obviously sick even to the casual passerby. The second diagnosis was pneumonia. Ten days later the pneumonia was gone, but it was replaced by a double ear infection and a third round of antibiotic treatment. Our pediatrician told us that for every day a child is down-and-out with pneumonia you can expect to take two days to recover.
By the time we were starting back to our routine last week, we were a full week behind in math and language arts. The only reason we weren't behind in other subjects is because I did all the read aloud books and asked no questions during the many days of being glued to the couch during the sickies. I let the kids know well in advance that our first week back was going to be light - only math and language arts - but that we had to double up most days in order to catch up to where we needed to be if we still planned a full week off for spring break and a mid-May end date.
The third day of our first week back I was ready to drive them to the Board of Education and enroll them both in public school. The whole week was horrid - bad attitudes, lack of focus, inability to concentrate on anything located in the relative proximity of the table where their books and paper patiently waited to be completed. If I had been able to project all their work onto the walls, we would have been in fantastic shape...but I wasn't.
Friday was particularly difficult. By the end of the day, when my time limits had been tested repeatedly for close to 6 hours, I was ready to go for a very long drive...by myself...and not come home for the foreseeable future. I was calculating how long I could be gone before I would be missed. Earlier in the day, in a fit of ugly mommy moments, I had devised a strategy to implement, and it was going to be tested the next day. Saturday School (cue music of impending doom). The idea was reinforced when Opera Queen told her daddy that she didn't get to play at all that day. I calmly explained and asked if she saw how the two were related: Work Done = PLAY!
During the week any unfinished work will be set aside for "homework" or Saturday. No work may be completed the following day unless it is part of the next day's assignment (e.g., brainstorming for a writing assignment). If Lego Man or Opera Queen so choose they may complete the work the same day providing that the following conditions are met: it is after regularly scheduled school hours, and all other activities have been completed. This will be called Homework. If those conditions are not met satisfactorily the work will roll-over and accumulate through the week until Saturday. On Saturday, after breakfast (I don't starve my children while they serve time), all unfinished work must be completed before any fun activities are available. This will be called Saturday School. Now, I don't know how many of you all went to a public school that used Saturday School as a form of detention, but mine did. I never had to sit through that agony, but I also knew I never wanted to. Break Detention was enough of a deterrent for me. I'm hoping that a time or two of experiencing SS firsthand will nip in the bud any desire to squander time.
On the flip-side I was trying to come up with a positive reinforcement to accompany my consequence, and this morning while I was finishing breakfast it came on me like the light bulb on Grampy's Thinking Cap. Our conversation went something like this...
Me - Do you know what a bank is for?
OQ - You put money in it.
Me - Why do you put money in it?
OQ/LM - To save it!
Me - Right. We put money in our bank account to save it so we can do what?
OQ - Use it?
Me - Yes. When Daddy gets paid, they don't give him a paycheck. His money goes right into our bank account so it's there and ready to use when we need to pay bills or buy something. We're going to start Time Bank Accounts!
OQ/LM - *puzzled expressions*
Me - What do you think we would do with a Time Bank Account?
OQ - Save time? How do we save time?
Me - *I'm so glad you asked* We're going to have a set amount of time for each subject - an hour for math, and hour for language arts, and maybe an hour for our core and science. I'm going to time you, and when you're done with your assignments, the time you have left is going into your Time Bank Account! Does that sound good?
OQ - Yeah!
Me - Then when you have saved time all week, say you saved an hour each day, how much time would you have? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday...
OQ - *interrupting* Seven!
Me - Only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...
LM - *interrupting using his "man voice"* Five.
Me - That's right! If you manage to save an hour every day, that's five whole hours you can use any way you want. What are some ways you might want to "spend" your time from your Bank?
LM - Shopping for Lego's!
Me - Okay, I guess we could shop for Lego's. What else is something you guys are always asking me to do but we never have time for because you don't get your work done? W... Wa... tch...
OQ - Watch...a movie!
Me - Right! You could watch 2 whole movies! How does that sound?
OQ - Yay!
LM - *still using his "man voice"* Ok.
So, I immediately put the plan into effect. I know for a fact that when my kids apply themselves it seldom takes longer than 45 minutes to complete math, whether it be test day or simply a lesson. I want them to have generous amounts of time to save, at least in the beginning, so I allotted an hour. Opera Queen saved 25 minutes, Lego Man saved 35. I underestimated the amount of time it takes for language arts, simply because I was estimating based on the amount of work Lego Man has. He's in Kindergarten, so he has significantly less work that is much easier than Opera Queen's second grade work. I started the timer with an hour, and Lego Man banked 5 minutes. When I realized Opera Queen wasn't going to have any bankable time, I looked back through my daily attendance logs and noticed that she had an average language arts time closer to 90 minutes. When she was out of time from the first hour, I alerted her that I set her clock wrong and gave her an additional 30 minutes. Of those 30 minutes, she saved 20. I do not plan to give them bankable time for core and science, because those are things we do together for the time being. In the future when they are no longer parent-led or group readings I will change this. Today we only spent about 20 minutes on our core readings, and science will only take an additional five minutes tomorrow to catch up on. Some weeks we save three days and do them all at once, so it's not a big deal if science isn't done each day.
Instead of punishing my children for not completing their work, I gave them attainable goals based on their own past performance. I gave them a way to take control of their actions and see immediate results. I'm going to let them decorate a Time Bank Account register to keep track of their savings. I want them to be self-motivated and reap the rewards of working diligently toward a goal. Today was not just a good day, it was a GREAT day! Lego Man had plenty of time to play. Opera Queen was able to go to dance and not have to worry about not getting her work done. They were able to brag about making their first deposit in their accounts. I feel today like a champion home-educator...let's hope the feeling lasts.
