Is this part of the new cruelty?

I finally had to crack down this week. I couldn't take another day of..."PLEASE do your work so we can move onto something else. Wouldn't you like to get done early once????" I know I would! I don't expect our days to go the same as a brick and mortar school. I do not expect JT to sit still all day. In fact, he usually spends most of the school day bouncing around the classroom or tilting his ottoman he sits on at all sorts of dangerous angles. Some days he even sits ON the desk. So, I am not being ridiculous thinking that one lousy math worksheet should be finished in less than 1 1/2 hours.

We now have a two part plan. The first part involves completing assignments. I show JT what I would like him to do. I give him more than ample time to finish it. If it is not done, it's homework. Homework! What kind of craziness is that? We are already doing 'homework' all day. My husband thought this brilliant plan up and it works like a charm. The mere mention of the dreaded 'homework' has turned my procrastinator into an industrious worker.

We'll see how long that lasts....

I also borrowed another motivational technique from one of my friends. Up until now, our usual punishment for misbehavior is taking away computer privileges. It's hard to make that work very well when JT is capable of losing it within the first five minutes of the school day. My friend has a system where the child gets ten 'ticks' before they lose the computer. Now I keep a tally of the ticks on the chalkboard throughout the day. Morale is improving! Especially mine!

I finally dug through my pile of enrichment materials this week. Today I gave JT a creative writing assignment I found in a book called "Historic Happenings Projects to Integrate History and Language Arts" (I did not pay the price Amazon is asking for this book, it was just the first link I found with a description of it...you can buy it for much less) His assignment is to keep a journal as a Civil War soldier. He needs to describe himself, family and home. He will also need to choose one battle from the war and describe it from his point of view. JT is very excited about it and has started preliminary planning. He loves history and writing (as long as it's not in cursive) so it's a great supplement for us.

This week will bring a new challenge. When asked what he wanted to dress up as for Halloween, my son thought for one second and said, "An angler fish!" Now I get to try to come up with that costume. Luckily, I found a step by step guide on making an angler fish paper mache head online. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? Just when you think you have the weirdest child on the planet, you find out there are full grown adults out there just as weird as he is!