What is it about children that they always want the opposite? 
My girls always wanted to be independent in everything when they were young. Of course, as the 16yodd gets older, she is becoming more aware that independence comes with responsibility but that’s a growing process. Yet the boys aren’t in any hurry to be independent. I’m not overly fussed about this as they will have a lifetime of responsibility as they mature. However, it is my duty to train them toward maturity and responsibility and independence.
One of the ways I use to train is the area of academics or lessons. Maybe it is my method or maybe it is something else but having self directed learning boys has not been easy for me- they seem to struggle with it. We used to have learning journals, where they would record the things they had done each day, but these would only get filled in for a day or so before they’d lose interest or lose the journal! It ended up being my responsibility, which defeats the purpose of the exercise.
‘Miss A’ is very self directed and motivated with her softball and fitness. I offer little bits and pieces where I can. I suggested that she might like to use a more visual system for keeping track of what she has done throughout the week. She liked this idea and set about doing it. She got the coloured index cards, wrote on them and sticks them on the wall when she has completed her workout. She likes it! It gives immediate feedback.
So I thought that type of system might work for the boys with their lessons. Well, it’s only been one week but it is still assisting them to record their lessons.
I used blue and yellow index cards and wrote out a week’s worth of their lessons. There are:
- 5 Math cards
- 5 Copy work cards
- 5 Spelling/Wordly Wise cards
- 5 Literature reading cards
- 3 Science cards
- 3 History cards
- 3 Geography cards
- 1 Personal development card
- 5 Practice reading aloud cards
- 5 listening to read aloud cards
Each day, as they have completed a lesson, they blu-tac the card to the wall. This provides immediate, visual feedback, which is a good motivator. They can also see how many lessons they have left to complete, which helped them to plan what they would do next. I taught the girls how to plan and record using notebooks or journals but the boys found this difficult. But this is something visual and hands-on! This seems to be working, at least for now. 
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