School, Part Deux

Thanks for letting me vent yesterday. I feel so much better today. Part of the problem is that today is Ethan's birthday, so all day yesterday I was sad that I am missing it. I have never been away from my boys on their birthday and I don't like it. Of course I started thinking about how Ethan is 15 (!), Alex is 16 (!!) and Christian is 18 (!!!) and all of the "Are they ready?" "Did we do a good job?" "Will they be able to make it in the real world?" questions started swirling in my brain... Not a good thing.

I have a plan, and it is a good plan. It involves using programs/books that we already have - a bonus to buying multi-year things, I suppose. If the book/program is under their level, that is ok, because 1) I will use internet resources to make it their level and 2) if it is a little easy for them then we can ease back in to things and hopefully break our 3 week record.

I take that back. We are going to buy one program. after Christmas we are going to start the Dave Ramsey High School program, Foundations in Personal Finance. Trust me when I say that there are not two kids on this earth that need this program more than Alex and Ethan.

So now I am on the lookout for ideas about incentives. Do you use them in your homeschool? Should I use them in mine? What do you use? do they work? Sydney (my niece) came home from school every day with candy. Usually a few pieces of hard candy, or some smarties, or some other small candy, but on days when she had done something special (like return her reading folder signed by the person she read to, 10 days in a row) she got a bigger piece of candy. I don't want to use candy as an incentive, but there has to be something, right?

Anyway, that is where we are now. We have a plan and a mom that feels like we are running out of time. Only time will tell if this is a good or bad combination.