Well, its wednesday. today was slightly different. we still got up just after 6 a.m. but got ready to go to our early morning prayer meeting at church, much to my husbands amazement, he was trying to watch something about the EU in turkish . the prayer meeting was excellent and then we went with nora for a bacon buttie, very nice.
when we got back we had our devotional time together. meric was grumbling about doing school work ALL day, i pointed out to him that it was only the stuff he hadn't finished in the morning that he had had to do last night, that quietened him. so, we were late starting this morning. this meant we didn't get to do reading aloud and hot chocolate until 12.20. after that i gave meric until 2.30 p.m. to finish his mornings work. perhaps i should explain that we are generally pretty autonomous in our home-education, but i do believe they need to learn the basics, so i buy a curriculum from Christian Educational Resources (see link) and use that as the foundation, then we go off into other things that interest us along the way. this morning for example we had a brief foray into dinosaurs and plan to do some more of that this afternoon whilst doing art. anyway, meric did spend a large part of the morning day dreaming, today he was doing nothing in a more disruptive way which did irritate slightly, i managed to stay cool however. he also tried to convince me that the handwriting he had done yesterday was in fact todays " class="middle">, i know i know, isn't he a bit old at 13 to be doing handwriting? well, yes, but since his writing looks like a 5 year olds i feel its something we need to work on, he can do beautiful writing but is basically too lazy anyway, needless to say he hasn't finished his morning stuff but i got alot of work done - answered emails, did the minutes for swimming club and started on the agm things so i am pretty pleased with what i have done. so this afternoon i am going to keep him busy doing chores and other things and then after dinner tonight we will come back in the school room to finish off the mornings work!! the thing is i also have a star system going, 10 stars earns half an hour on the electronic equipment of choice (x-box), 11 stars are earned for doing the mornings work in the required time, if all the work isn't done in the time no stars are earned, so when he realises he isn't getting on his beloved x-box we might start getting somewhere. in the meantime please pray that i will continue to remain calm and serene!!
the x-box, seriously, i could throw it out of the window. what happens to my lovely son when he has been playing on that for any length of time? where does meric go? why is it all he talks about and why does this condition seem to affect some boys and not others? its a mystery.
i think that the reason i am feeling calm about school and the way meric is, is because i have managed to put a time to things - not a timetable, just a period of time - morning stuff should be finished by lunch, then we will do something different no matter what, instead of letting meric's disruptive behaviour upset the whole day and we get nothing done. we are going to leicester on friday to visit family, so there will be no school friday or monday. when we restart i am also going to be doing calculadder - speed maths drills, these will be part of the mornings work.
anyway, i am off for my own lunch now, we have swimming club tonight, i quite like being the secretary and i quite like starting or judging at galas, but i can't do with all the politics and hypocrisy, it really gets me down. when i didn't know anyone and could just sit reading while the kids trained it was really nice, i valued the time, now i just end up getting all caught with the gossip and politics, people are so two faced it makes me crazy, so, i am considering whether to stand down at the agm, i have done three years, but i bet no-one will volunteer to take over and then i will feel guilty, plus i have access to the photocopier - everyone has to have a perk and i use the computer for alot of swimming club stuff.