It's Thursday?

This week has gone by soooooooo quickly!

Let me do a recap:

Monday--well, my Monday plans were silly. I've shared this before in this blog and always seem to forget. On the day back, *I'm* raring to go, but the kids mainly just want to share what they got, socialize, etc. The 15yo got a decent amount of work done, the 12yo set some goals, dd did a little work and ds... I think he just played. lol. In the afternoon, we went to our weekly park day, where dd, ds and the 12yo spent 2 hours skating!

Tuesday--started getting into a better work routine. Had our afternoon work session until about 1:30 or so, then ran some errands.

Wednesday--work routine is getting even better, although the 15yo had an eye appointment at 10:30, so she was picked up around 10, cutting her morning work time by an hour. Then she didn't get back and wasn't done lunch until past 12:30. She still managed to get stuff done, but she's essentially done NO math all week. Just a little on Monday. The 12yo tested this new routine and complained about the Work First policy and other things, like not being able to watch a movie in the middle of the week. The 15yo pointed out that that's how it was when they first started--we worked in the mornings, had free time in the afternoons, movies only on Friday... I have spoiled him way too much. However, I've become aware of it and am determined to stick to this new way of doing things, whether he really likes it or not!

At one point, he complained about the work I was having him do and how he just wanted to do it later (procrastination?) and I explained to him the 3 levels of high school here--the advanced for those who do well, the average, for those who can't handle or don't want to do the advanced, and the low level, which has a bad stigma with it and doesn't even give you a diploma and really limits job options afterwards because of the stigma. He hummed and hawed and I said that he has some goals to reach within the next two years--the time to start working on them is now, not in two years. I also added in, "I'm not going to let you fail, so this work needs to be done first," or something like that. Within a minute, he'd buckled down and did his work. Not totally focused, but he still managed to get it all done by lunch. There's a part of me that would love for him to go spend a day in a junior high--get a huge wake-up call as to what really goes on.

Somehow he thinks I'm being unfair, but I'm not sure he realizes just what a kid in school would be doing, and how much more a kids who's behind would be doing. I'll have to figure out a way to show him.

So, that brings us to Thursday. I had put off introducing any social studies or science topics for ds and dd, but dd's been kind of wandering this week and I think she needs something new. She's resumed work on her Around the World in 80 Days, so social studies is fine for now (although I haven't read to them from Story of the World all school year, I think! I want that book done this year!) but she could use some science. So I need to figure that out this morning, print off the 12yo's list for the next two days and I think that's it. Well, and sit down with ds to do some language arts work because we didn't get much in yesterday.