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One of my boys is bored…what do I do?
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Hi There,
We have moved from our Miami home and are living in my parent’s vacation home in Stuart now. We have a contract pending on our house after 3 days. PTL!! This has been SUCH a year getting the house in sellable condition and packing and transitioning. It’s taken every spare moment and then some for the past year.
Now, I’m a little more settled (till we find a house), but we have been hit with illness after illness. All 4 children have had the flu (don’t know if it is the swine flu) and now I’ve got it. I’ve been taking alot of supplements, vit. b12 injections, etc… trying to heal my adrenals and recuperate my body from years of ignoring it. My husband continues to travel for several days a week.
My plan for the year for my 11yo boys was for them to read 2 chapters of a G.A. Henty book or Ballantyne book a day, a lesson out of Queen’s Language Lessons, Teaching Textbooks Math 5, Wisdom Proverbs Study, and a BJU handwriting book. My boys finish their schoolwork in less than 2 hours and one of them in particular, spends the rest of the day moping and looking for something to do. We have not picked up Spelling Wisdom yet. Just trying to find my bearings.
I do read aloud for history (TQ Middle Ages) and Bible and fine arts. I also work with my busy 5 yr old who is a bit challenging and demanding of my attention.
Is there something I need to add to my boys’ day? We do have Legos, K’nex, and toys for them to play with. We’ve all been sick so we haven’t done alot of socializing outside of church. My other son will open a book and entertain himself or play with his toys. My busy boy cannot live without noise, whether it be the Christian music station constantly in his room, or begging for a video, or begging to play Lego Star Wars or Webkinz. He is constantly begging for screen time (though we don’t have play stations for this very reason). I don’t know what else to do for him? It is becoming a battle between my son and I.
My parents spent some time with us last week and they were concerned that my children were not doing enough school. I worry that we aren’t doing a formal science program…I just couldn’t add one more thing to my own list.
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for all the intro.
Blessings,
Betty
I am new to CM, so I can’t tell you if you are doing enough. I always want to do too much myself. But I wanted to help you with the boredom issue. My oldest is like that, complaining that he’s bored a lot. I found a parenting book called Loving Our Kids on Purpose. It talks about Grace Based Parenting, but you still have to teach your children to behave. I use this in addition to Laying Down the Rails. So, when my 9 year says he is bored I send him to pick up all the pine cones in the backyard or scoop up the dog poop. Another thing is I give him more school work like copywork that he can do on his own. Maybe you could give your son a poem to work on memorizing. My 9 year old rarely tells me he is bored anymore because he knows he will have to do some labor.
I simply HAVE to chime in, because I LOVE Loving your Kids on Purpose! I look forward to getting the dvd’s in the future, but for now I just read the book. Over and over. LOL! I have a 10 yr old boy who loves “screen time” too. It’s frustrating. But I’ve found that the more I can get his mind engaged elsewhere the less he focuses on the next time he can play on the computer or watch a video, etc. We are still cutting back from a mostly TV based lifestyle, so it’s a transition time for us. We cut the sattelite in July. I honestly don’t miss it at all. The kids….they do, occasionally. But they’ll live.
Ok, I”m rambling so I’ll stop.
Karolee
Karolee,
My brain is a little foggy from the flu right now. Could you give me specific things that you are using to engage your son in place of screen time?
Also, is a science program at this point, really important?
Thanks!
For Science we do hands on activities, right now we are dissecting. I bought a kit with 7 animals for $10, a set of scalpels for a couple dollars and some trays I can throw away, and pins. With shipping it was less than 20, we will do this until Christmas. I also got some good books from the library on Human Body and on the different animals we are dissecting. This is from Home Science tools. If money is not an issue we love Little Proffessor Academy of Science. There are no books, just hands on activities, mine have learned more by doing when it comes to science. The nice thing about them is all the things you need to experiment are in the box, and they are even seperated into baggies with labels of what experiment it is. They include a Lab Journal for your boys to fill out what they discover. Another science that was fun was The Backyard Scientist.
Instead of the DVD’s of LOP I got the CD’s, at the end is a Question and Answer Session that was really helpful to me.
The CDs are great, too. My church does a showing of the videos at least 1x per year, so that is how I saw them. I would imaging that the CDs would be the next best thing. I can’t say enough about how Loving on Purpose has changed our parenting for the better. However, anything by Danny is awesome.
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