One of the things I love about home education is that we can takes breaks whenever we want. So when everyone else is in school, we don't have to be, and when everyone else is out of school our learning doesn't stop. For the most part, we have breaks when other do, though. That's when all the fun things are happening!
That being said, we have had some school days this summer, and we've had days where the kids begged me to have school with them. Mostly we've had fun and been busy with getting our house ready to sell. We did do two summer reading programs. One was through the local minor league baseball team, and the other was through the library. The kids are all still at the 'read to me' level for these programs so they are super easy to complete since we read so much. (Our library piles have been out of control all summer!) The only exception this summer was that Logan did his own reading for the library program. That was a bit of a challenge since he's not a fast reader yet, and he'd get tired of working at it after a while. His daily book perusal is still mostly picture studying.
Anyway, the library program ends this Friday, and a few days ago he still had a row and a half of stars to complete for it. Completing the program was a big deal to him because one of the final prizes is a free admission to the Children's Museum we have nearby. We took the kids last year with their tickets they'd earned through the library program and it was probably our best family outing for the year.
So this year his siblings had already earned it, and he was going to be crushed not to earn it as well. He was running out of time, and I had a mommy-dilemma over it! For one thing, it was largely my fault he wasn't closer to finishing because all he needed from me was to sit down and listen to him read a little every day, and I'd been slacking in that. Another problem was that I didn't want to leave him out of the trip to the Children's Museum if he didn't earn it, BUT I felt like he would learn the wrong lesson if I rescued him (by either paying for his admission, letting him pay for it, or filling in the rest of his stars for time I'd read to him which technically was perfectly okay). Pretty much his whole reason for doing the library program this summer was to earn the trip to the Children's Museum!
SO...This weekend I applied some pressure. I didn't force him to read, but I stressed that he only had a few days left, and we discussed how disappointed he'd be to miss out on the Children's Museum. I made an effort to sit down with him on Saturday and he earned a few more stars. Sunday morning he read to me and we filled in two more stars. Then he looked at his chart and suddenly saw the light at the end of the tunnel! He sat down and read until we had to go to church, and then finished after church. He was SO PLEASED with himself, and I felt very relieved! I'm so glad he earned this himself. (His reading has really improved this summer as well.)
