Motivation for Schoolwork and Chores

We are constantly looking for ways to motivate our ds to do schoolwork and chores and to follow the rules. Here is what we have come up with. If ds is finished with his schoolwork by 4PM and he has an average of an 80% for all assignment he will receive 1 hour of screen time. If he comes to me before 4PM and says he is done and I have to remind him about an assignment I take away 15 minutes of screen time. 2 reminders costs him 30 minutes. I give him poker chips that he can redeem at any time (only after schoolwork and chores are finished) throughout the week. I can use them daily, or save them up to be used on one day for an extended video game period. It is his choice.

We are having a bit more trouble with the chore part, though. We currently give him $10 per week for allowance as he more opportunities now to do things with the youth group. Monday he has pooper scooper, straighten his room and kitchen duty, Tuesday he weed eats the yard (it is small so it takes him about 15 minutes), straightens his room and wipes down the bathroom, Wednesday he sweeps the porch and lanai, dusts upstairs, has kitchen duty and straightens his room, Thursday he deep cleans the bathroom, straightens his room and washes his laundry, Friday he has kitchen duty and Saturday he dusts and vacuums his room. Each day's chores should take him no more than 30 minutes, except the day he deep cleans the bathroom. After adding all the chores up he has a total of 15 chores. $10 divided by 15 gives me .66. I think I might make each chore worth $1 and just not pay him for straightening his room, giving me a total of 11 paid chores.

So how do you decide what to pay for? Do I pay him for the completed job, even if it took him 5 times to get it right? Do I deduct money for each time I need to go back because it was not done right the first time? Do I give him a specified number of times to get it right and then withhold the money if he goes over?

The Widow's Might

The following is taken from www.thewidowscry.com. I found them when I went to www.rebelution.com which is written by Alex and Brett Harris, authors of the book Do Hard Things.

In 2003, HeuMoore productions was unofficially started. A collaboration of two Alaskan teenagers, David HEUstis and JohnMOORE, primarily focusing on short silly videos, was born.

2005 found John and David relocated to Texas, with some upgraded gear. After more experimentation found them very popular at the worlds largest Christian film festival, they began to focus in on developing quality family entertainments.

In 2006 they created the award winning documentary 'A Lifetime of Childlike Faith', which tells the dramatic story of one man's journey in his dream of sharing the gospel with people from all over the world. This success soon found over ten thousand copies of their film in distribution, and they were on the road to bigger and better projects.

2007, HeuMoore Productions found new members added to the team, and their film 'Heartstrings' won both the Best Young Filmmakers award, and the Audience Choice award at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. This was the first time the Audience Choice award had ever been taken by Youth contestants.

They were disappointed though, that their technical quality hadn't grown to nearly the level they had hoped. So in 2008, they launched their biggest effort; The Widow's Might.

The Widow's Might is a full length feature film set in modern day America, following the struggles of several Christian families to keep a widow from losing her home due to tax foreclosure. The Widow's Might is by far HeuMoore's biggest, most intense production. Working with experienced hands like James Burgess (Cinematographer and Colorist on Pilgrim's Progress) and Charles Lake (Assistant Director on Time Changer), we believe ourselves up to the challenge of a theatrical release feature film with excellent production values and rich moral landscapes to inspire Christians accross the nation; But we can only do this with your help!

There is a list of ways you can support this important effort:help!

Stay informed! - Go to WidowsMightTheMovie.com and sign up for email updates. We need a solid base of supporters, and we want you to be a part of the movement!

Recruit! - Get 10 of your friends or family to sign up on the email list, and tell them about our project. Forward this email to everyone in your inbox, and post this information on your blog!

Support! - The cost of feature film productions is high, but you can support The Widow's Might by purchasing the Heartstrings DVD. Heartstrings is not only a great film for your family, but is an excellent gift choice, with meaning and power. Order it Here. HeartstringsTheMovie.com

Be a Leader, and help your friends reach their ten; the power of word-of-mouth is astounding, and is the key to reaching the world with messages of hope found in Christian films. It is only a small inconvenience, but does a tremendous service to us as filmmakers.

Be a part of this movement toward God honoring films. The industry can only thrive with your support!
Thank you!

Teenage discipline

Here is a question for all you moms out there. What sort of punishment/consequences do you impose on your teenage children? Our son is already under tight supervision because of a lack of trust and his refusal to follow rules. He has to earn screen time based on getting his schoolwork and chores done daily by 4PM and only gets his cell phone once all of schoolwork is finished. It is taken each night before bed and kept by me until the next day.

Here is the current situation. My 14ds was told to be home by 5:20PM and was told before he left not to text or call asking for more time. He texted me at 5:15 (which I did not receive until later) asking for 30 extra minutes. He did not text back again until 6:30PM, this time asking how much time he had left. I told him he was over an hour late and told him he should have called me or come home when he did not receive a response to his text. He finally got home and I gave him his punishment-being grounded for 2 days, one day per 1/2 hour. He is grounded from friends and his cell phone for that time period.

He immediately launched into an attitude and tried saying he had texted me, but I had not texted him back (implying it was somehow my fault). He then tried telling me it took him 30 minutes to find his friend and another 30 minutes for them to fix something, so he should not have had to come home after the hour was up. I told him he was going to do dishes tonight as his punishment for the attitude and it just got worse from there. We took the dog for a walk and he argued the entire way about the unfairness of it all (and the fact that he NEEDS the bigger room when we move. Hello, how does that relate to the current topic?).

After we got home and he ate dinner he kept trying to get out of doing the dishes. He tried offering to do the dishes Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday instead (Monday & Wednesday are his days anyway), and then switched to arguing about how tired he was and that he just wanted to go to bed early. He finally went in to do dishes, only to lie about using hot water. I told him he was to wash all the dishes on the counter and unload the dishwasher, meaning for him to wash all the dishes, not just load the dirty ones into the dishwasher once it was unloaded. It was more of a principle thing-having him do the harder job of hand-washing all the dishes. He refused and ended up putting most of the dishes in the dishwasher.

I decided to not say anything, but went into his room and took the speakers my husband let him borrow. He noticed as soon as he went to his room and came down looking for another arguement. I told him that since he decided to disobey me I took the speakers back. My thought now is to have him unload the dishwasher tomorrow at lunch (our normal chore time) and he can hand-wash all of the dishes like I told him to tonight. Any thoughts?

Latest movies

We have recently started going to the base movie theatre to watch movies on the weekends. In the last two months, we have watched Prince Caspian, The Hulk, Indiana Jones, Wall-e, and Kit Kittridge. We are not a movie-going family and this is by far the greatest number of movies we have seen in a long time. I think the difference is that I have recently started checking to see what is playing for the month and adding those movies we are interested in to our calendar. We are even set to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth next Sunday afternoon.

I have been very pleased with all of the movies and have not left the theatre after any of them thinking it was a waste of money. For instance, today we watched Kit Kittridge: American Girl. A review of the movie can be found at Plugged in Online. ds-14 was not enthused to say the least about watching a "girl" movie, but he agreed with me at the end that it was a very good movie. I told my daughter she should read the Kit series and write a compare/contrast essay on the books and movie. I am not sure if I will actually have her do it, but if our writing program this year has her doing a compare/contrast I might bring it back up.

Moving Update

We finally got the truck shipped off. Months ago I settled on a company to transport our truck from Honolulu to Denver and was all set to go until I did some research about them online. I found this great website, called Transport Reviews. This is a site that customers can post and read reviews on just about every transport company that is in business. As I started reading the reviews on the first company I was dismayed to find that they had only received 2-stars out of 5. I went even further and found that most of the problems stemmed from horrible customer service. I started digging around and investigating only those companies which had 5-star ratings. I made myself a list of those companies and read through their reviews, leaving out anyone who sounded rude in their responses back to customers. I finally settled on All America Auto Transport. I have been dealing with Mike and he has been wonderful.

Dh arranged for our household goods to be picked up, the car to be shipped and for our move-out inspection from housing. Everything seems to be rolling along nicely, but I still have moments of panic when I think I have surely forgotten something.

I arranged for us to move into a corporate lease in an apartment complex in Charleston for 2 months. The unit is fully furnished, including linens and dishware, and includes all utilities. It is priced higher than our SC BAH, but we will be receiving HI BAH for the first month, so between the two months it will even itself out. Our goal is to find a house to purchase in the first three weeks and close by the end of November. Our lease will be up December 9th so that will give us time to do any painting and pre-move set-up.

Grandma in Kansas has kindly offered to keep both kids for us for the month of October. We will leave them with her when we drive through and then she will drive them out with Grandpa towards the end of October. Dh and I are very excited to have some one-on-one time. It will make the house-hunting go a lot smoother as well. Grandma has a garden and Grandpa has a workshop, so both kids will have plenty to do. Dh and I only get alone-time about once per year. In 2004 we were able to fly Grandma out to be with the kids so I could fly to Scotland to spend 2-weeks with hubby during a port call. In 2005 we went on a 7-day cruise for our 10-year anniversary (again flying Grandma out). In 2006 I was able to fly to England to visit with dh. The visit only lasted 2 days as his schedule changed and they had to leave sooner than we thought. Grandma and Grandpa were both able to come out for that trip. In 2007 we did not get any alone time as we took a family vacation in April and then moved to Hawaii in July.

The only complaint from the kids is that they want to be with us to choose the house because they want some say in their bedroom choices. I told them they will get to choose bedrooms from the house we have chosen after they return and I am sure they will be happy with the selection. The houses in SC all seem to have 2nd living rooms or FROG's so we are looking forward to having an actual schoolroom. I am looking forward to having a real yard and a driveway that I can pull at least 2 cars into. I am also looking forward to being out of the main traffic loop. We are hoping to find something within 30-minutes of dh's work, but still be kind of out in the country. I am hoping to be able to find a place close to a riding stable so dd can ride more than once per week. She will probably have to work off some of her lessons, but she loves everything to do with horses, so I am sure it will not be a problem.

Fun evening science

My son reached into the bread drawer tonight and pulled out...a bag of homemade moldy bagels. I thought immediately about science (of course). We are currently studying clouds, but mold makes a nice detour. Ds did not want anything to do with it, but dd and I got out the microscope and slides and went to town on the mold after we ate our dinner. The bagels had three different colors-black, green and white. Using the scalpel we sliced off pieces of each color and looked at them all. We found that mold is actually made up of small spores that look like tiny bean bag balls. When they stick together they form lines of spores, looking like hair. We opened up our Usborne Internet-Linked Complete Book of the Microscope to do further research. We found out you should not eat moldy food even after removing the mold that you can see, as the mycelium threads will have already spread throughout the food. Some fungi are poisonous and can make you sick. It is not a good idea to breathe it in either, as you will be ingesting mold spores.

For further research you can go to Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc. for some great images of fungi and slime molds.

Start of new school year

We started school about 5 weeks ago because we will be taking off some time during our move in September and October. I plan to take our math books, TOG Year 3 and Writing Aids. I will have the kids do math 2-3 times per week so they don't forget anything and we will keep a journal of interesting things done and seen while traveling. I started TOG 3 earlier than the online co-op we will be joining in October so we could take it easy during the move. By starting early, we will finish week 7 before moving into the hotel here in Hawaii and then will have to complete weeks 8 and 9 over the course of the next 6 weeks.

I decided to put aside the individual science curriculum in favor of doing a unit study with both kids. We started with air pressure and have moved onto cloud formations. We will be keeping a daily temperature chart for the next month or so to see how the temperature goes up and down in different areas of the country. I picked Divide, CO because that is close to where we would like to retire, N chose Herington, KS as that is where Grandma and Grandpa live and S chose Summerville, SC as that is where we are moving to. So far so good on keeping abreast of it each day.

I plan to move my other blog over to this site in a couple of weeks, or possibly after the move once I see if this site is easier to use than homeschool blogger. I have been having problems with pictures not loading and would like to post lots of pictures. It just makes the blogs so much more fun to read.