After debating for quite a while, I also tied it to their allowance, in that completing the list of chores earns each child one dollar in her hand, and one dollar put away to save for Walt Disney World (do not even get me started about this, please). It's not an ideal solution to the allowance situation, but 1) I wanted the girls to perform work in exchange for their money (mean Momma, I know), 2) they don't care enough about money to do extra work to earn it, and 3) I want them to have money regularly, so that they can experience saving and spending it (and so I can have a good reason to tell them to stop griping for stuff in stores), so I needed to tie it to work that they were already expected to do, basically. If they ever get motivated enough to complete their entire responsibilities list every single day I may have to rework the system, because that's more cash than I'm willing to put out, but for now it works well.
Each child can complete her list at her leisure, coming to me when she wants to do a project that requires an adult's help, but if she takes longer than one day to finish all her responsibilities (and she does), then on the second day and thereafter she can no longer have access to her media entertainment--no computer, no TV choice, no music or audiobooks. She can still play pretend ponies for four hours at a time, for example, but no Usborne Quicklinks.
The girls can still choose to add their own things that they want to do to the list, of course, but we're on a tight budget, so they can't add something like getting ice cream or going out to eat, for example, but the Wonderlab, the public library, and playing Quirkle are all fair game.
The last change that I've made is that although I still assign projects for Syd to do with me or ask her for suggestions or give her choices, Will is now responsible enough to choose her own schoolwork subjects each day, and think of a project that she can do on that subject, and complete it with or without my help, as necessary. So when she added "coral reef sketching" to her list, she helped me clear the living room table to use as a workspace, got out the crayons while I got out the drawing paper (mental note: need more drawing paper), did a Google Image search with my supervision, chose the coral reef images that she wanted to copy, and got down to work:
Syd, of course, is not to be left out of any activity. She sat down and chose to sketch her toy cat:
A masterful representation, don't you agree?
Will created at least a dozen different sketches of different coral reef scenes that she found via Google Images. I was surprised, however, to see how impressionistic each one is. This, for example, is a reef scene that includes a starfish:
This one included a large brain coral and a school of colorful fish:
Each image that she drew from was teeming with color and life, and so it's fascinating to me to see how she distills each one:
Although I recorded this activity under Science and Art in Will's records (the requirement for record-keeping isn't clearly laid out in Indiana law, but I do know of one couple who went through a lot of very upsetting hassle because of their lack of records, so I keep them), it's one of those projects that is so clearly her own that I really don't know what she got out of it, exactly. It would be easy to look at these drawings and think that she'd just put in the bare minimum of effort, but I saw her carefully select each image to copy, study it thoroughly, concentrate on every line in her drawing, and most importantly, I saw how proud she was of every finished sketch--clearly they are masterpieces in her eyes, and therefore they're clearly masterpieces in my eyes, as well.
It's one of those projects that helps remind me how important it is for my children to own their own educations. If Will hadn't completely owned this entire coral reef sketching project, from start to finish, how would it have ever come to be?
5 comments:
Ok, you KNEW *I'D* be the one to ask...What's up with Disney World? You know I'm a pimp for the mouse!
You ARE a pimp for the mouse! I want to go sometime, so basically this month I'm planning the whole damn thing so that I can price it out so that I can figure out if it would even be possible to save up to go in, say, 14 months or so. If not, then maybe spring of 2013. How would you rate the dining plan, by the way? Did you do all sit-down meals? It would be cheaper to stay off-park, but convenience + wanting to do a couple of character meals is making me seriously consider the resort + dining plan option.
We did the deluxe dining plan. It was 3 sit-down meals that includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert for every meal. For us, it was NOT worth it. Lex doesn't eat pretty much EVER, and I could never dream of eating that much ever for 3-5 solid days so that was a waste of money. We've always stayed on resort as a matter of convenience. Parking at the parks is outrageous (like $20 a car or some such nonsense), and the buses from resort to park are free and plentiful. I would HIGHLY recommend the value resorts. We LOVED all-star movies, and we were kind of meh about pop century. The character meals are so pricey that I really couldn't imagine NOT having at least the standard dining plan to pay for those. Our favorite character meal is a dinner at the Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom. It's a buffet, and it's $60 a plate. I'm not kidding. The standard plan is 1 sit down meal, 1 quick service, and 1 snack. That's the one we plan on doing the next time.
If you have any other questions, let me know. Between us going a couple of times in the last year, and the fact that I have a friend that works for the Mouse I'm pretty knowledgeable ;-)
I am thinking standard dining plan, and probably a value resort, although we're getting a little big for the two double bed business. It would be nice to be able to upgrade to a moderate resort with a trundle under one of the beds, but I'm not willing to pay a ton more for it--I'll bring sleeping bags for the girls first!
If we get the Standard plan, we're definitely going to do a character meal for every sit-down--I don't think it would be worth it for me otherwise, because I'm a huge cheapskate. Did you feel like you spent all your time in the park eating, or were the sit-downs a nice break from the chaos?
Since we'll be going next October, I'm considering springing for tickets to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. Maybe a five-day ticket with no park hopper option, but I'm still not sure. I've tentatively decided that our budget for just the Disney stuff will be about $2,000, with extra for travel there and back and a few days at a cheap hotel on the beach afterward, so I may just need to see what all I can get for that amount when I'm ready to book.
Nah, I didn't feel like we spent that much time eating in the park. Having reservations helps although they can get behind and you still have to wait sometimes. It's not a huge deal, and your kids are older. It probably will be less of an issue for you guys that it is for us. Dining can be just as exhausting as dealing with the crowds in the park sometimes though if you have to wait.
It is kind of a pain to have the reservations, though, too. Because sometimes you want to do something and you know you don't have time to do it because you have reservations in an hour and the line to do whatever is 45 minutes long. That's kind of a pain, but all in all it's really worth it for the character meals.
Dennis is the one that plans ours, and he said if you hit it just right, you could probably do the 2k. Right now, they're offering free standard dining plans, and that's why we're even considering going again. So, just watch for specials!
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