"Meanest Mom Ever"

I'm the meanest mom ever.  In case you thought you were I'm here to tell you that you were wrong. According to my kids I am the meanest mom.

I know we all hear that at times and most of the time it makes me laugh.  Sometimes it makes me roll my eyes.  Sometimes it just makes me mad, especially when they get mad at me for making them do school.  Really the pitiful amount of schoolwork that they attempt each day is nothing compared to what they could be working on if we didn't homeschool.

I know they were angry that it was snowing and we still had school.

Yep, you read that right even though we got lots of snow yesterday and instead of having a snow day off from school I made my kids do schoolwork.  

I know! I'm mean, right?

I even made them multiply!

SO mean!  

The older boys colored a quilting page practicing basic multiplication facts.

 Evan and I played a version of the card game war.  We took all the number cards (ace-9) and divided them into two piles (I wished I had thought to use two decks since the game was over pretty quickly).  We each turned over three cards and made the largest three digit number we could.  Evan turned over a 4, 6, and a 3 and made the number six hundred forty three.  He then looked at my cards and saw that I had four hundred thirty two so he won the first round.  Play continued with Evan practicing reading his number out loud and putting the cards in order from greatest to least.  He always knew who won and unfortunately for him I had all the 9's so I ended up winning.

That was math.  That was it.  So yeah today was a day their complaining I was a mean mom kind of got to me.

It can be hard, seriously hard to motivate my kids to get their schoolwork done.  It can be a battle and it's not always one I'm up for.  

Today my strategy was just to forge ahead and keep pushing them through; not the best strategy but at least we got some schoolwork done.  

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one with this problem.  Other homeschoolers often talk about their kids finishing their work early or pulling out a workbook "for fun!" and completing work when they don't even have to.  

 I often felt like I was alone and that no body else had a hard time getting their kids to do their homeschool work. 

 I now know I'm not alone but it can be daunting to think I'm doing something wrong because my kids aren't self- motivated to do schoolwork.  

I have now realized that it's something pretty much ALL homeschool families struggle with.  

  

I wish I had advice and great solutions to keep kids motivated but I don't.  

Let's face it; there are days I'm not motivated to do any of my work either.  I don't sing while I clean or run skipping through the house joyfully preparing meals.  Work isn't always fun or intrinsically rewarding and some days it's an accomplishment to just get the work done.   I know they're kids and I try to keep the work fun, fairly short, relevant to real life but there are definitely days where we just get the work done so we can day it's done.  Today was one of those days!  

Here's what we did: 

Evan and I finished up lesson four in The Reading Lesson.  It's been a while since we've used this book so we quickly reviewed the letters we've learned so far.  It took him a while to remember some of the words we were working with last time but by the second page he was doing great.  We completed four pages and looked at the new letters coming up for the next lesson.  Evan asked if he was going to read a real book today or not and I told him that it was up to him.  I considered his reading lesson as reading but I would absolutely read another book with him if he wanted.  He chose not to and finished up working with his sight word puzzles.  We also read some new sight word flashcards I'm hoping to use for a fun go fish game today.  He then went to go play for a bit.

Once the older boys were done with their math sheet they went to go read.  Ian went up to read one more chapter in his Roscoe Riley book and ended up deciding to read the last two chapters and finish up his book. Alec pulled up Spirit Animals : The Book of Shane #1 on his Kindle. He had started reading this mini series last night and was eager to see what would happen next.  I knew the book wouldn't last long since it was only 40 pages but I was surprised when he finished it.  The older boys also worked on spelling today.  I quizzed Alec on his last spelling list (that we haven't even looked at in over a month!) and Ian worked on another page in his new spelling book.  That was reading and language arts.  That's it!  

All three boys wrote (or dictated) a rough draft for February's post card exchange.  We read Viking Longship and learned more about the Vikings.  We finished up our morning of work with a fun Minecraft Bingo game.  We played full card Bingo, regular Bingo and their own version of four corners Bingo.  It was fun and it helped me learn a few more Minecraft terms.  Luckily, by the time math and spelling were over and we were onto playing Minecraft all the kids were over the fact that I was the "meanest mom ever" and we had a great day.  They loved playing Minecraft Bingo and teaching me all the names of all the objects.-- Writing and history lessons. 

After lunch all three boys geared up to head outside.  Ian has been begging his brothers to help him make a fort.  It took a bit of persuading on Ian's part to get them to work with him today but they finally agreed.

 

Alec and Evan settled down to watch the groundhog episode of Wild Kratts on TV while I was supervising Ian,who was cooking our dinner.  He chose to make cheeseburgers and hot dogs for everyone.  He thawed out the rolls, grilled up the burgers and boiled the hot dogs.  Evan set the table and we sat down to a nice meal of burgers, hot dogs, and salad.  Life skills and Science.