Where we live, if you do not want something, you can put it on the side of the road for others to take, or let the garbage men pick it up for you. When on a walk with my 4-almost-5 year old and Daddy this past Shabbos, he spotted it. The Treasure! It was a chair with the fabric on the arms of the chair all torn up. “LOOK AT THAT CHAIR, MOMMY! ” “No, you are not taking it. It is broken, see?” “But Mommy, I have PLANS!” Oh, I’m sure he does! Three of my boys have brought home all sorts of treasures this year. Wood. Ski poles. Kayak oars. Wood. Huge art folders. Wood. A BRAND NEW printer still sealed in the original packaging. Okay, can’t get too upset at that one. Oh, did I say wood? I have finally put my foot down and said that if they want to bring anything else onto our property, they need to get rid of the same volume of their other stuff. The only exception are the cans they collect to bring in for money, but they do have to stay in the breezeway.
I took the little one out for a walk yesterday and we saw a pair of Adirondack chairs out for garbage – “MOMMY! Look!” “No, it is broken.” “But I have PLANS for it! I have plans for ALL chairs!” 😐 Oy, it is a good thing he was not out when I went for another walk and a few feet away from those chairs was a pair of bar stool chairs.
I have been busy, but not too busy, but just busy enough and not organized enough to get things done that I would like. It is almost
the end of the school year and I have spent several weeks thinking about the past year, especially the past 4 months or so. Why is it that I cannot find 1 hour to blog a week, or at least every 2 weeks? No real good reason other than I have just not been organized to get things done like I should. How that happened, I am not quite sure, but once it started it was hard to find the time to sit down and organize properly to fix it. Now, I am trying not to let it worry me too much and just trying to finish off the year. Anything that should have gotten done can always be done during summer school.
My husband and I had a much long overdo walk and conversation this week. We spent an hour walking and talking about the boys and how things were going (or not going.) We talked about issues we were having with various beautiful boys and how we could deal with things. We have known about the issues for a while, but we have not been able to take the time to have a good hearty talk about it. It took a while, but then time is great and we finally came across something to try. One boy is very needy emotionally and takes up a lot of time. I do not mind giving time, but I feel better and will do it more happily if the time was actually productive. So, I decided to totally scrap our schedule two weeks before the end of the school year. And I mean totally.
After breakfast jobs, davening and parsha, I spend either the entire morning or the entire afternoon with the one needy boy. He gets ALL my attention. The other older boys each need to find 2-3 things that they can do by themselves to do from the weekly list, and the little one has to entertain himself with the occasional help from a brother. This one boy has to do basically all his schoolwork in the 2.5 hours before lunch with no break (with the exception of Mishnayos and daily memorizing). And then… here comes the best part… he gets the rest of the day OFF! That’s right, he gets to basically do whatever he pleases as long as he stays on the property. The only catch is that if he does not finish all that he is supposed to do, then he has to work ALL afternoon. In the time that I am not with said boy, I can devote my time to the other boys. There is one subject a day where we share the time with one other brother so I do get 2 birds with one stone there.
I have now completed day 2 of the new schedule. Yesterday went off amazingly. Today, not quite a nice, but still pretty good. Said boy was told before he went to bed tonight that as long as he works well in the morning with me, the entire afternoon is free. He was pretty excited about it. I am wondering if we should do just mornings together for then he does get a longer stretch in the afternoons and he does seem to work better in the mornings I think.
Other than that, it is just trying to finish up the books that we have not quite finished yet and trying to decide upon a summer schedule. We will be working on school stuff, though hopefully they will have some free time which will, in turn, hopefully give me some free time. 🙂
In the meantime, I need to make my way to the b-e-d. Boys have been sent to bed, but they are still rather loud. I think I’ll remember to shut my door completely. 🙂
Pleasant dreams!
I really would like to know how the plan of giving attention only to one boy for a set period of time works out. I am dealing with a similar situation here. Sometimes I wonder whether homeschool kids are all the same souls, only in different bodies for different families and we can all take a peek and encourage each other since we are all going through similar things.
Hi Ilana, I will have to keep you posted then! I like to think more along the lines that each child (person) is so uniquely different and therefore each has different ways of learning. Our job as a parent/teacher is to teach each Al Pi Darko (each to his own.) Some are easier to teach than others, that is for sure. I do agree that we are not alone. It is very important to reach out to each other for help, advice and suggestions. 🙂
Rivkah