I want to start a record of a few things that are working well right now for my family. Before I do so, I want to be clear: I am in no way perfect. I do my best and hope it's good enough, but I am constantly making mistakes. Just last night I brought Stella to tears when I told her that I thought taping something to her Valentine's Day Box would be worse than gluing it. (I don't care if she wants to tape it! It was certainly not worth making her feel bad and I didn't realize that she was so emotionally invested in tape.) This is not meant to be taken as advice for my posterity, my future daughters-in-law, or my contemporaries. I'm just taking notes for my own benefit.
The first thing I want to talk about that I have kind of sort of figured out is the Reading Log. Ugh. These have been a thorn in my side since Jack started school. That was nine years ago. Teachers send home these calendars that I am expected to keep track of for a MONTH and log the minutes that my kids spend reading at home each day. I hate these things. I have never had a problem getting my kids to read (in fact, I have caught myself saying things like "You won't be allowed to read if you don't fill in the blank.") They read for hours every day. When I pushed bedtime forward an hour, they were actually excited because it meant an extra hour of reading time. Reading is a nonissue in our family. The last week of the month would roll around and we were rarely able to locate the darn calendar and even then, we had no clue how much time we had spent reading. It was A LOT of time, okay? Due to their love of reading, I felt like we were following the spirit of the reading calendars, even if we were always losing them and not turning them in.
I am embarrassed at how simple the solution is to this dilemma, and if I'm being honest, I wasn't even the one who came up with the fix. It was Stella. She's the first of my kids to care about her Reading Log. Guys, she TAPED IT TO HER WALL. Duh! She taped it above her bed and every morning she records her minutes from the day before. Then she helped George tape his Reading Log to the wall in the kitchen and all of a sudden I have two kids who turn in accurate logs of their reading minutes. We are going on four months in a row.
Yes, it is unsightly. It's purely functional. Someone else would have a super cute bulletin board or some Pinterest project for their kids, but not our family! We stick it up there with Scotch tape.
We apparently love our Scotch tape.
The first thing I want to talk about that I have kind of sort of figured out is the Reading Log. Ugh. These have been a thorn in my side since Jack started school. That was nine years ago. Teachers send home these calendars that I am expected to keep track of for a MONTH and log the minutes that my kids spend reading at home each day. I hate these things. I have never had a problem getting my kids to read (in fact, I have caught myself saying things like "You won't be allowed to read if you don't fill in the blank.") They read for hours every day. When I pushed bedtime forward an hour, they were actually excited because it meant an extra hour of reading time. Reading is a nonissue in our family. The last week of the month would roll around and we were rarely able to locate the darn calendar and even then, we had no clue how much time we had spent reading. It was A LOT of time, okay? Due to their love of reading, I felt like we were following the spirit of the reading calendars, even if we were always losing them and not turning them in.
I am embarrassed at how simple the solution is to this dilemma, and if I'm being honest, I wasn't even the one who came up with the fix. It was Stella. She's the first of my kids to care about her Reading Log. Guys, she TAPED IT TO HER WALL. Duh! She taped it above her bed and every morning she records her minutes from the day before. Then she helped George tape his Reading Log to the wall in the kitchen and all of a sudden I have two kids who turn in accurate logs of their reading minutes. We are going on four months in a row.
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| The reading calendar is the pink paper at the bottom. The sight words paper is for another time, another post. |
We apparently love our Scotch tape.
2 comments:
My even simpler solution will be to falsify the record.
Kara, that solution only works if you can keep track of the calendar. Baby steps.
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