Spring is in the Air

The weather here has been simply beautiful for the last week. I finally have a method to motivate the boys. They want so badly to play outside, they will do just about anything to get there. This has led me to believe that schooling through the summer might be more beneficial than winter schooling. I doubt I can win converts with that doctrine.

With the improving weather, our thoughts are turning to gardening. JT loves plants. He's always been actively involved in my flower beds. Last year, we made our first foray into vegetables. This year, we plan to expand. Today the kids were outside with paper and markers drawing up a plan for their portions of the garden. I quickly realized we are going to need to dedicate more space to this endeavor. Pumpkins, cantaloupes, beans and cucumbers on top of what I had already planned will be way too much for our little garden.

I told the boys we would need to scout out a new location. One prime spot had questionable sun exposure. The boys came up with a plan to keep a chart of how many hours this patch of yard has sun for the next few weeks. Then we can decide if it will be acceptable. JT said, "Hey mom! This can be like a science experiment!"

Good boy!

One more thing...if you follow Pioneer Woman's blog, you may have already seen the link to FreeRice.com. If not, I highly recommend it. It is a quiz site with many different subjects available. When you answer a question correctly, rice is donated to the World Food Programme. It is highly addictive and educational. When you miss a question, it is thrown back in the mix to give you a second chance. JT was able to use the knowledge he has gained studying prefixes, suffixes and word roots to do very well in the vocabulary category. It felt good to know that not only had I provided him with a tool he could use to expand his vocabulary, I had also given him the opportunity to help others with that knowledge.

Self Motivation

Last week was the week off in our 6 week on/1 week off routine. I once again failed to spend those days making excellent plans for the next 6 weeks. In fact, I made no plans. Sunday night I shuffled some books around on the desk and said, "Hmmm. This looks good."

We had much running around to do on Monday anyway, so I knew it was pointless to plan too much. By Tuesday I did have a more concrete plan for the week. Then JT took matters into his own hands.

He decided it was about time he gets faster at multiplication facts. Multiplication was not on my plan. I walked in the room Wednesday morning and EM was holding a stop watch while JT was quickly working his way through the math problems he had on the white board. They did this themselves! It took longer than I wanted to spend on math so I felt the need to rush through some other work later that day.

Again, Thursday morning....same thing. I was a bit annoyed now. I had PLANS. But then I noticed something. JT's times were HALF what they were the day before. He had found a way to motivate himself. I didn't have anything to do with this idea. He even had his brother's total cooperation. (He loves the stop watch.)

Now I can just hope he decides he'd like to write more compositions.