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Accountability Thread Sep 14th


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I hope I'm not stepping on any toes :). This week I'll be working on planning. Yesterday I worked on our science plans. I'm really happy with how these worked out, I'm using Life in a Bucket of Soil. For the most part we've done oral narration and discussion for our content and literature readings, well now I'm starting to add a bit. We will be working on baby steps to help him learn to glean key points and some other skills. I think and hope I've got it at an appropriate level. The reading level of the book will be easy for him and I have him just doing a few pages at a time as a nice gentle intro and a bit of an assessment of where he is at with these skills. I've also planned a bit of basic journalling, internet research and small projects. 

 

On the docket today is history and maybe lit, depending on how long it takes me. I need to be coordinating a few books here but mostly we will be just enjoying good books and discussing with history this session. 

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I'm about to get this week's lessons into Homeschool Tracker. I only do a week at a time so I don't feel behind if we don't get to everything!

 

We've also tweaked our schedule. DS has insisted on studying 3 languages this year. In order to ease up on our regular school day schedule, he has agreed on his days off to do a Spanish lesson one day and a Latin one the next. What I learned from our first go of it this morning: keep the language study on "off" days light - i.e., review chants and vocabulary and then play around on a Spanish/Latin website for a bit.

 

I also have to tweak our history lessons a bit. 

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I've put together our new science unit - Chemistry & the Periodic Table.  So main accountability for me will be preparing for that, especially the labs.  I'm notoriously bad at prepping labs so often skip them if I'm feeling rushed or lazy.

 

We're starting Unit 2 - The Big Bang - for Big History.  Shannon has an essay, a challenging one I think.  We will also finish discussing The Hobbit and she will write an essay on that next week.  So for both of us, accountability for making sure these essay assignments are her best work and that she gets meaningful feedback.

 

We have a field trip on Tuesday, and Morgan starts two new classes - art at mid-day and drama in the afternoon - on Wednesday.  Shannon has horseback riding on Thurs & Fri afternoons.  So it's a lot to fit in, I feel a bit harried already.  But we'll do our best.  Deep breaths!

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Well, I have finished my history plans and I ended up not using quite all the books I had bought and ordered some new ones as well. Oops! I realized I had too much of one period and not enough of another. I'm asking ds to take a step up in this next session with his reading. I think he can do it and considering the fact that his reading will be light in science I think it will be doable, of course the real test will be when we actually do it. I might have to switch things around with RA and silent reading a bit. On the other hand I think we've needed to step up here so it will be good for us. Reviewing and previewing the books I'm excited to refresh my poor memory on American History. I'm really focusing on the ideas of the time periods, I want him to look at the big picture and the motivations and morality behind what people did. 

 

I need to break for the day, my eyes are burning. Still left is looking at lit and deciding how I want to do the schedule. I'm thinking of having a paper copy for him in the coming 6 weeks but I don't know if I want to use a printout from Scholaric or a simplified spreadsheet of just his independent work (math review and reading mainly).

 

Rose- I hear you on schedules. I might have gone crazy with my own. I kept ds' science pretty basic this coming session as I know my follow-through is not likely to be grand right now as we are in the throws of robotics and to much other stuff. 

 

I hope we all have a good and productive week!

 

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So I've determined that my nephew needs a lot of help in math and English. So my goal for this week is to sit down with my sister and discuss only focusing on that with him and not even introducing science or history this year. With my oldest being in kindergarten I don't need to worry about a formal science or history with my own kids so holding off for them a year would be fine. I know she'll be fine with this since she knows where he struggles.

 

Another thing I need to work on this week is reading to the kids aloud at least 30 minute a day.

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Is it Winter break yet? I'm wiped and coming down with a sore throat. Whaaaaa! This will be a super busy week. We have Dancing Grits, Girl Scouts, and cross country as our extras, a field trip on Wednesday, and I have to work outside the home on Thursday. Since we're using the folder system, the week is already planned out. I'm sure there will be some tweaking, though... There always is. I have to call and set up music lessons for dd12. She started band last Friday, but I think lessons will definitely help to get a good solid start. My major stumbling block is that dh took vacation this week so he will be home everyday. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate, and he will be out hunting everyday as planned.

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We've decided to tweak our history schedule a bit and slip in some Big History. We did Unit 1 last week. Both kids are watching the videos and DS is only generating a bit of output from the program. I don't want to spend more than 4 weeks on it so I'll be picking and choosing; I actually had a full Ancients program planned before hearing about BH and slipping it in because I couldn't resist! 

 

I'm looking forward to a productive week!

 

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Is it Winter break yet? I'm wiped and coming down with a sore throat. Whaaaaa! This will be a super busy week. We have Dancing Grits, Girl Scouts, and cross country as our extras, a field trip on Wednesday, and I have to work outside the home on Thursday. Since we're using the folder system, the week is already planned out. I'm sure there will be some tweaking, though... There always is. I have to call and set up music lessons for dd12. She started band last Friday, but I think lessons will definitely help to get a good solid start. My major stumbling block is that dh took vacation this week so he will be home everyday. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate, and he will be out hunting everyday as planned.

Glad I'm not the only one who feels that Daddy can be a distraction! :D I am up for the day, have supper and lunch planned, and the day/week planned. I ordered Math in Focus to replace regular Singapore because I desperately hope it will be easier to teach and require less planning.

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We've decided to tweak our history schedule a bit and slip in some Big History. We did Unit 1 last week. Both kids are watching the videos and DS is only generating a bit of output from the program. I don't want to spend more than 4 weeks on it so I'll be picking and choosing; I actually had a full Ancients program planned before hearing about BH and slipping it in because I couldn't resist! 

 

I'm looking forward to a productive week!

I really like the looks of this but I'm holding off until next year as we've got too much planned for this year already!

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I was salivating over two things this year: IEW's Fix It and MCT's Caesar's English. Oh, I wanted both of those so bad!

But I'm glad I taped my fingers together so I couldn't hit purchase. We don't have time. They would just be things sitting on my shelf that I'd feel bad for not using.

 

Today's plan is to get through Latin, Math, Grammar and Comp and Spelling, and today is the day I start teaching outlining for history work per WTM. That's going to go over like a lead balloon, so I'm getting all ready for the complaining and whining. Got my whine jars all prepared. 

 

The whine jars have been a good deal. Each boy has a cup with four glass beads in it. Those are free whines for the day. But when they whine, they have to give me a bead. I listen, I don't get upset, just take the bead and put it up. If they ever run out of beads, they get to perform a chore for me. Currently on rotation is 15 minutes of baseboard cleaning. 

So far I haven't gotten my baseboards cleaned yet. I think the jars have gotten down to one bead one time, and some days no beads get used. You can see the whine start, but they hate having to give me a bead for it. 

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Well, Monday is done.

 

There have been three sessions of online Latin Class thus far - so far so good!  I am so glad that I bought a new router this summer.  Our internet connection is finally stable.

 

Math is under control.  He wants to continue with AoPS.  He is not the fastest nor the strongest math student, but he definitely prefers the teaching style of AoPS.  We have agreed to 60 minutes a day of AoPS and additional practice problems for homework, if I think it is necessary.  I will plan to pull the practice problems from Foersters.

 

We are both enjoying Fellowship of The Ring.  No problems there. 

 

Writing is going to get most of my attention this year.  I am teaching writing on Mondays and Wednesdays.  This is the instructional time / critique time (no set curriculum), and assignments are given out.  Due dates correspond with the class. Writing got done last year, but it was shoved around the schedule too much.  Now it has a slot that is as locked as math. High hopes...

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Monday is basically done.  My nephew didn't come today so the kids and I knocked out most of their stuff before breakfast and they've been playing nicely together all day.  We still need to do math and ds's mandarin but I'm going to clean the computer room at least halfway before we start that.  

 

I do have to rework the schedule for the rest of the week to make sure that my nephew gets everything done that he missed today.  That will likely mean knocking another lesson of phonics out with my kids today to have some extra time to work with my nephew tomorrow. They both seem very motivated since I wrote out the entire list of what they need to accomplish this week.  They have enjoyed crossing things off the list.

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Well, our day is kinda sucking so far.  Shannon is totally stumped by the rate section of Alcumus, so we are going to spend the rest of the week - starting tomorrow - reviewing that.  Along with basic multiplication and addition, apparently!   :banghead:

 

We're skipping the field trip we had planned to do tomorrow.  Until these kids can get themselves up and get started earlier in the morning, we can't take time off to play.   Grouchy mama, much???  :sneaky2:  :sad:

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Well, our day is kinda sucking so far.  Shannon is totally stumped by the rate section of Alcumus, so we are going to spend the rest of the week - starting tomorrow - reviewing that.  Along with basic multiplication and addition, apparently!   :banghead:

 

We're skipping the field trip we had planned to do tomorrow.  Until these kids can get themselves up and get started earlier in the morning, we can't take time off to play.   Grouchy mama, much???  :sneaky2:  :sad:

 

Hope you have a better Tuesday.  I implemented tardy slips last week.  And he has to get himself up in the morning, or I will back up bedtime 30 minutes per day until he can do so. I am a morning person and don't recover well from late starts. I guess that makes me a grouchy mama, too.

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Hope you have a better Tuesday.  I implemented tardy slips last week.  And he has to get himself up in the morning, or I will back up bedtime 30 minutes per day until he can do so. I am a morning person and don't recover well from late starts. I guess that makes me a grouchy mama, too.

 

It's tough, because I'm now doing my exercising in the morning before school, so I really need them to get up and feed themselves in a timely manner and be ready to go. What's frustrating is that I feel that me taking the time for some self care - commiting to excercising and losing 10 lbs - is negatively affecting our school, but at the same time, I gotta do it.  They are just going to have to step up, I'm feeling over self-sacrifice right now.  Plus, calorie restriction makes me grumpy.   :glare:

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So far the day has gone well for a Monday. Got through Latin, Math, Spelling, Grammar, Writing, and the boys sort of did Science by completing their grammar--the lesson was to find 10 sentences that were useful facts and declarative sentences, and both extracted that assignment from science books. 

Will read Jules Verne this afternoon and some Arkansas State History and I think we will call it a day.

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Today is going okay. I unplugged the phone and put my cell on airplane mode. Lots of dinging and ringing noises today, driving me crazy.

 

DS struggled with some of those exercises in which a box with labeled sides is unfolded and you have to label the sides on the flat box. I can't complain; I'm really bad at those too. 

 

We forgot our online class until 1 minute before it started and were late. We remembered in the middle of McGuffey so we abandoned that too. We'll have to pick it up after lunch. 

 

Onward...

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First time I've been online since my coffee and reading time this am :)

 

Dd is on subject 7 out of 7 for the day :party:

 

We talked about planning her week this morning. She agreed to do extra on Monday and Tuesday because that midday Arabic class takes up two hours (transitions and 1.5 hr class) on Wednesday and Thursday. I don't think she was realistic about her Friday schedule but we'll see ;)

 

I have to write a chem test for Thursday.

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I've put together our new science unit - Chemistry & the Periodic Table.  So main accountability for me will be preparing for that, especially the labs.  I'm notoriously bad at prepping labs so often skip them if I'm feeling rushed or lazy.

 

We're starting Unit 2 - The Big Bang - for Big History.  Shannon has an essay, a challenging one I think.  We will also finish discussing The Hobbit and she will write an essay on that next week.  So for both of us, accountability for making sure these essay assignments are her best work and that she gets meaningful feedback.

 

We have a field trip on Tuesday, and Morgan starts two new classes - art at mid-day and drama in the afternoon - on Wednesday.  Shannon has horseback riding on Thurs & Fri afternoons.  So it's a lot to fit in, I feel a bit harried already.  But we'll do our best.  Deep breaths!

 

Can you please come over here and teach my kids! Your units sound so interesting. :001_smile:

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Today has been awful!!! Its like EVERYONE woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  My nephew didn't show up again today which is probably a good thing since everyone has been so crabby.  We got school done and there was actually no whining during all that.  It was the free time that was a complete mess!!! Kids argued with each other, they constantly argued with dh and me, the baby was hit everyone!   Its just been crazy.  I called a one hour alone time for everyone.  They can do whatever they want as long as they do not talk to another person the entire hour.  Hopefully this will help us all chill out!  

 

I think I'll do something extra fun with them afterwards to try to brighten our moods.

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Going OK here, but not great. Somehow, despite reviewing subtraction over the summer, and recently as two weeks ago, the boys managed to forget everything they ever knew about borrowing just in time for their pretest today. Oh, the weeping and gnashing of teeth! Oh, the angst and the pain! :glare: They are so dramatic. 

 

Guess who will be having subtraction homework to do this weekend. But I am loving the CLE concept of student checking their own work. Somehow when the book tells them it's wrong, I get to be helpful mom instead of the mother with the glass eye and the wooden tail.

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Yesterday the older two did math and music practice, dd6 did reading, and I spent too many hours trying to get our AC fixed with no luck. It was 92 degrees F in the house in the afternoon so we hung out in the shade in the backyard.

 

Today is an official school holiday in honor of the birthday of a pupil--one of the best perks of homeschooling :)

 

Orchestra this afternoon, so music practice is still mandatory.

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Today was a bit of a rough start because I thought it was Wednesday, a day when we do fewer things due to two standing appointments in the afternoon. After going over the day with the kids, I realized today is actually a full day and had to re-adjust expectations. 

 

On the brighter side, DD really enjoyed her math and did double what I assigned. I don't get it; sometimes it's pulling teeth and other times she's sad when we have to stop, even within the same math topic.  :confused:

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Can you please come over here and teach my kids! Your units sound so interesting. :001_smile:

 

 

:lol:  I was just re-reading your thread on teaching textbook reading, and wishing you would come over here and teach my kids!  Maybe we can organize some kind of transcontinental exchange????

 

I'm still tweaking this, I may have to give up on my goal, which was teaching the girls together.  It seems like what I've put together might be a little too hard for Mo and a little too easy for Shannon . . . we'll have to see if I can pull this off.

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This week school is put off because I am focusing on the 2 year old's potty training.  Potty training is the worst.  I hate it so much.  And all things considered, she is doing pretty well, but I just hate it all.  I'm making it up to myself by reading fluffy books on my Kindle as I sit on the side of the tub, hoping and praying that I'm not wasting our time.  Also sneaking M&Ms that I'm using as a reward for successes.

 

After a lot of thought, I just pulled the plug and bought CLE Math for dd6 today.  She has been doing great with Saxon, except that we are averaging an 1 hour and 20 minutes per day to do it.  Even with being a bit distracted (although not more than a normal 6 year old, I think), it is still just too much time for her and I can see her starting fight me more about it.  As far as I can tell, CLE will be similar to Saxon but not take as long.  Here's hoping that's the right decision.  I'm feeling nervous about it.

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Last week was rough because we were packing all week, but overall we did okay. We did all of our spelling except our test on Friday. We got through all of the "instruction days" of math but not the extra review days. We did bible 3 out of 5 days (we are behind here already) and we did 3 out of 4 days WWE. We did Spanish and art at co-op. We missed science instruction this week so our "lab" became more of a demonstration. History was a miss all together.

 

We are at Disney this week. We get home late next Monday and will probably take Tuesday as a recovery day. Wednesday is co-op day and we usually don't get much done outside of that so we'll spend Thur/Fri next week catching up what we didn't finish (History/Science).

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We had much better success with Mapping the World with Art than I thought we would. By this, I mean I bought it for DS10 and DD6 decided she wanted to draw Mesopotamia. It actually came out pretty well! And there was enough map labeling I gave her credit for handwriting practice instead of having her do her Zaner sheet.

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Both girls got everything on today's list done!  Yay!!  :hurray:

 

I'm still rethinking chemistry - my fantasy to do science together just might not fly.  I will have to play that by ear and adjust as needed.

 

Shannon is going to park on Rate word problems for awhile - she's going to do the 4 relevant chapters in Zaccaro Real World Algebra before we move on.  Alcumus helped me realize she was really shaky on work rate problems, so we're backing up and moving forward solidly - go slow to go fast, right?

 

The next three days have extracurriculars/afternoon activities, so they will have to be a bit lighter. But I'm happy we had a good day today!

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Rose, the only subject we could do together once older turned 11 was history and only because older was not that interested in the subject.  Literature, science, and logic had to be separate.  My younger's questions were good, but wasted my older's time.  My older's questions were good, but way over younger's head. Shared subjects just became inefficient.  We still studied the same topics at the same time (so biology for example), but we had to use different resources and I had to switch to 1 on 1, rather than 1 to 2.  I just think that at age 11 kids start to accelerate.  Maybe it's hitting the logic stage, I don't know, but togetherness ended here 3 years ago, at ages 11 and 8.

 

 

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This was the first day since Labor Day that we didn't get everything done.  :(

 

I have a chronic illness and I just ran out of steam around 2:30 and had to lie down. DH has been out of town and I wore out, I guess.

 

We had about an hour left, just a bit of writing and our Latin lesson, both for DS. DD finished all her work at least.

 

Guess what we're going to be doing this weekend?  :nopity:

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Can you guys please tell me how you tell if you and your child need to be accountable versus you plan too much and have unrealistic expectations. I need some specifics because I really struggle with this with my younger.

I don't think that I have this figured out, but it is one of my main goals so I think about it often.

 

This is for 8th grade:

 

We have only a limited things blocked on the schedule. He has great swathes of time to manage and select work. We hung up a posterboard showing all of the blocked times in one color and the free choice times in another color. We used sticky notes, so it is easy to amend. He is welcome to spill his work into the evening, but *I* am off-duty at 4 PM. I only take simple questions after 4 PM :)

 

I make a stab at assignments for the week, and these are on OneNote. My OneNote templates are getting better and better each week, but my ability to predict a week of work is still only so-so.

 

What I *do* know is what he has been doing all day. It is easy for me to know if he has been industrious or slacking. Therefore, bumping things for a reason is fine with me. Maybe what I assigned was more challenging than I had anticipated. Maybe I flat-out put too much work on the schedule.

 

One thing that I never do is add work after the fact - I save my awsome idea for the following week. But this is really a non-issue. Given that my tendency is to be overly ambitious - I can't ever imagine him finishing everything by Wednesday afternoon, for example.

 

 

HTH

Looking forward to reading replies from others.

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When anybody figures out the answer to lewelma's question, I'd love to hear it.

I can't figure it out either. It doesn't help having boys who can be so on the ball one day, and then completely absent in mind and spirit the next. Make that minute to minute. Five minutes ago I was brokering a peace treaty involving theft of intellectual property over a story idea and a purloined character. Next thing I know the two of them are making Halloween masks and trying to jump around the corner and scare me. One minute I'm firmly convinced that we are ready to move on to bigger and better things in math. The next minute they've both forgotten how to borrow.

I don't really know how to set expectations for these jumping beans. It may be that it is just best to plan the way I plan, and just get ready to alter things on the fly from one day to the next. Maybe it evens out in time?

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I started to type out some big explanation, but I realized that the truth is, I wing it!  I have a schedule but it's totally flexible and changes on a daily basis, because for some things it's impossible to predict how much will get done in a day.  If I realized I planned too much, I push things back to another day.  If she is really off, or engrossed in a play project, we'll have a discussion and might decide to take an easy day and then work on the weekend to make up.  It's a constant dance.  I like what Penguin said, we do a lot of the same things over here.  

 

In the past I've given Shannon her assignments one day at a time.  I'm now taking a stab at giving her a weekly schedule, as things are more complicated with extracurriculars starting and adding together work in the afternoons.  It still changes every day!  It's hard to predict how long things will take sometimes, and I do reserve the right to add more things in if I underestimated - which is more rare than the other extreme, to be sure!  But yesterday she just got 1/2 chapter done in math - so that spills over to today.  But she finished her lit book, so we discussed it and she'll start her new book today - ahead of schedule.  It's a constant dance.

 

Not at all helpful, I'm sure, but hopefully dispells any myth that things run smoothly around here!  :lol:

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Worst day in a while!! We are done for the day and did everything on the list was done, but I should've quit instead of forging ahead. I'm pretty sure nothing was actually learned today! I am the culprit, I just ran out of patience today with a 6th grader that wants to do the workload of a 1st grader, two college students and that first grade that remembers every single phonogram EXCEPT for the E. On a good note we did get to Latin and the lesson was sweet!!

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Got the basics done. Latin went well, Math went okay, Spelling and Grammar went better than average. I've still not started formal writing. Both boys are still writing almost every spare minute of their time in creative work, and I really don't feel like getting in the way. Our grammar lately has had a strong composition component with sentence work, and I've been using spelling to help with sentence composition as well. 

I have not been getting to history well this week. Or science, except in video format. That's got to get better in the upcoming month. I may pick up a few used textbooks to help in creating a structure there to go with the books I have. I think I need to see how to prepare good questions for discussion. I'm just not getting around to making up my own lately.

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I started to type out some big explanation, but I realized that the truth is, I wing it!  I have a schedule but it's totally flexible and changes on a daily basis, because for some things it's impossible to predict how much will get done in a day.  If I realized I planned too much, I push things back to another day.  If she is really off, or engrossed in a play project, we'll have a discussion and might decide to take an easy day and then work on the weekend to make up.  It's a constant dance.  I like what Penguin said, we do a lot of the same things over here.  

 

In the past I've given Shannon her assignments one day at a time.  I'm now taking a stab at giving her a weekly schedule, as things are more complicated with extracurriculars starting and adding together work in the afternoons.  It still changes every day!  It's hard to predict how long things will take sometimes, and I do reserve the right to add more things in if I underestimated - which is more rare than the other extreme, to be sure!  But yesterday she just got 1/2 chapter done in math - so that spills over to today.  But she finished her lit book, so we discussed it and she'll start her new book today - ahead of schedule.  It's a constant dance.

 

Not at all helpful, I'm sure, but hopefully dispells any myth that things run smoothly around here!  :lol:

 

This is exactly what I do with my younger! :001_smile: Ah, Rose, you are my long lost twin.  But what I am worried about is that then he does not have any definite requirements.  If he does not get it done today, oh well, just do it tomorrow.  Where is the accountability? 

 

At what point should at least some of his assignments be strict, and if they happen to be difficult, then he has to rise to the occasion or put in more work?

 

So how can you tell if he is just slacking/inefficient/not focused and should be, versus I have given him too much work or it just happens to be too hard and he needs more time? (gosh don't show SWB that sentence :o )  DS is only 10, so perhaps by the time he gets to Shannon's age, it will be clearer.

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