Quick update

Thursday morning, I told the 13yo to get himself a blank notebook so he could keep everything he was interested in learning in it. He preps his notebook (an older one that he pulled the used pages out of), sits down, creates a title page, then... writes three lines of a report on trees! lol. It was fantastic. Not at all what I had in mind (I don't think he understood that this was supposed to be for him to collect information, not tell me what he knows), but it was superb. So focused, pleased with himself... It was great.

I didn't end up doing the required reading that day, but did tell him on Friday and he was totally fine with it. I ended up getting attitude, passive-aggressive attitude, and blew up at him and finally said something about my real anger is that he is not cooperating. He ended up going off for a while, came back in a better mood and apologized. It was a signal to me, too, though, that what I was asking him to do (Phonics Pathways) was something he really did NOT want to do. The point of PP with him is to get him to read through the words. I can do that with him in other ways, though, like analyzing a short sentence from a book or poem or whatever. So I'll change what he needs to do for his remedial time with me.

The 16yo has her 'sticker chart' with the recommended work 'chunks' for Oct. each having their own box. She MADE herself get this one thing for her social studies done on Friday. It was great. I'm going to use that to help her develop a habit of really making herself accopmlish certain goals. That's the really hard part about this type of high school homeschooling--she has work she needs to accomplish, but there's nobody telling her that this is due this day or you'll get 0, etc. It's like school projects, where you put things off and put things off, except these school projects are her entire courses. Some thinking, praying and affirmations brought me to a point this morning of seeing how to use that success on Friday to have an empowering, guiding discussion tomorrow. She could definitely make herself get at least 2 things from her chart done each day and build up to having the drive and confidence to get more than that done. Once she sees those starred work blocks filling up, it'll be even more motivating--I hope! (Btw, she is the one who wanted the sticker chart. :) I bought a bunch of different stickers at the dollar store to use and they choose the sticker when they're done.)