Procrastination.

If there was a way to sing an ode to this word, I would. It is a great plague of doom around my house. My spouse is the leader of The Procrastinators. There are 2 wee minion followers that obligingly follow his postponement teachings to a T. Oddly, C complains they "never listen to what he says", but they sure mimic his less desirable procrastination techniques. My personal favorite is the: I'll do it here in a little bit. A little bit NEVER COMES.(Or comes with a giant fit, sobbing, screaming, crying, kicking, biting, etc.) So.... We we are in Boot Camp of Time Management. I must admit that this first week has been an epic failure, but the misery that poor time management has brought may have made my point for me. No video games, no movies, no actual really *fun* stuff until the mandatory items (IE school and chores) were completed. I have each a detailed list on Monday morning of what had to be completed before Sunday at bedtime.

Neither started until Friday morning. They had to cram their entire weeks worth of school into 3 days (and I planned enough for each for 5 reasonable days), their laundry, errands, and other mandatory items into Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (today).  I think they wanted to see if I was *actually* going to make them do it. Hahhaahaha Yep. Sure did. Gonna do it next week too (and the week after that, and that.. and that..). I am happy and very proud of them that they managed to get it ALL DONE by noonish. I DID add in an extra bribe if they managed to get it all done before late today. Especially since T2 had a new concept with his math that he found very hard at first. But, once they gave up procrastination and set a timer (Ok, well T1 did anyhow) she got it done remarkably quickly. If an ice cream bribe teaches them the correct way to NOT procrastinate, ice cream it is. I think they actually got a lot more done with their school with this list method than they had been previously as well. I know there are some with the "What? School, in the summer?" But, realistically, it does work better for us. There is no refresher time with restarting, no re-gearing time, no resettling into schedules and routines. I want them to enjoy the summer, but I don't want to have to strangle them either. Plus, if we decide to go somewhere or someone gets sick, we can just push it back a few days without a concern. And there are several times in the summer the weather just is too hot to do anything. But, in the spring this year, there have been several days the weather was gorgeous and we just felt like playing - so it all works out eventually. Well, mostly. They end up ahead on the mandatory 180 days per year, but too many is better than not enough.

Here, lately, 1 & 2 have been into dress up a lot. This is one of my recent favorites.

Georgia

We are working on the States - learning a little about each one (the capitol, the flower, the motto, the state animal, the state bird, what the state is known for..) and we were doing Georgia today. T1 is responsible for MOST of the work, seeing as how T2 is just getting to the point of being able to read and write adequately and T1 can do both fairly proficiently. (Well, that and that silly age difference - but if you heard THEM bring it up there is no difference.)  I'm sitting with my laptop trying to find something that will make Georgia look exciting and fun (really all I found was a state that would KILL ME- but that's a different topic), and was asking them their questions at the same time so they could look through the library books to find the answers and write them down. I then got to "What's the state flower?" T2 is, at this point, in his underwear (again - it's 2 pm at this point), dangling upside with his legs flopping about down in the corner of the couch doing a headstand. He states happy as can be "A rose. I don't know what kind of rose though, but a rose of some kind."

Now, I'm sure there are a TON of people who think the memorization of facts is very important. That the capitols, birds, flowers etc have to be memorize by state and be regurgitated for all times - *I* am not one of said people. I figure that unless the world comes to a immediate end and/or zombies attack that's what the internet, smartphone, iphones, and the like are for. It IS important to know the states, about where they are on a map,  geographically what they are next to, be familiar with the capitol so if someone SAYS it you don't look like an idiot. So I Google the answer because T1 has the books and I don't know what the flower is right off the top of my head. The state flower of Georgia is the Cherokee Rose.  T1 had no idea and she remembers almost everything she finds interesting. Just another reason I don't doubt the weird things my kids say even when they are upside down, in their underwear, talking on and on about roses - Those weird little monsters of mine are usually right when it comes to stuff like that.