Argh!!

What a frustrating day for mama! Back to our old rut of the kids sitting and staring into space and me saying repeatedly, "Do your work. Get back to work. Do your math. Do you need help? No? Then get back to work. Where did those toys come from? Put them away and finish your math. DO YOUR MATH! AHAHHHHHHH!"

I want them to love learning, I want them to be literate and productive members of society. Shouldn't they be able to do a lesson of math in less that 3 or 4 hours? Shouldn't they have to do a lesson of math?

I wish I knew how to make learning fun for all of us in a practical way that we can all accomplish. We tried a reward system last year, that worked well for a few weeks. Then we all lost our motivation.

B did do his math, spelling, dictation and grammar, and work on his letter-still no good copy though. That took him til almost 4.

R finally finished his math after 4, I did interrupt him at one point to work on spelling. Spelling did not go well. He got 5 out of 7 words wrong on his pretest. We use Spelling Power and the kids are pre-tested on the list before they see the words. Then they only study the words that they spell wrong. He gets discouraged when he gets a lot wrong though. Once we get to 5 mistakes we stop and he does the study section.

We did get some 'school' done today, but no fun, no impromptu learning. I don't want to fight with them and have to make them do their work all the time. I don't want them to hate learning. I need direction God. Help!

The boys had a big reward to look forward to tonight. A CFL game. B is supposed to go with the church youth group, and R with his dad. They are so lucky to have that opportunity! How fun. I had also told them that we could go to the space and science centre with some other homeschoolers in the afternoon if they got their assignments completed in the morning. That did not happen of course.

The boys did get to go to the game and the Eskimos won!! They are so excited.