It’s hard to be nine-years-old – which would be the viewpoint from my oldest son, Jonathan.
He keeps getting hit with the same hard lesson – it doesn’t pay off to procrastinate.
I will take you back to a Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the month.
“It’s not fair brother is playing on his tablet and I’m not,” Jonathan said sadly at the dining room table while staring at the laptop screen and playing with the book next to him on the table.
I pushed the screen down on my laptop. I looked at him and paused for a moment before I asked how long he had time to work on his project during class. I knew the answer but I wanted to let him say it.
Two months, he replied. He had two months to work on this project which he was calling a ‘book’ but resembled a PowerPoint presentation. He had January and February to work on it during school. It was now April and it wasn’t done. There was no more time to work on it during class since they had moved on to the essay portion of English Language Arts.
Now, a few snags were on my part trying to get his school Google information from his teacher so he could get into the document and any changes made at home would be saved. But in the meantime I had him look up the information and write down what he wanted to say and type out once he could get into the file.
On that Sunday, that’s what he was doing – he was working on his project on planets, typing out the notes into sentences. When he just couldn’t focus anymore we sat down and I went through with him what he had left to do.
The lesson – don’t procrastinate. The work does not disappear, so now instead of enjoying his weekend, he was sitting at the dining room table doing homework.
I told him I get it – I am a procrastinator. I even have a T-shirt that reveals I know my weakness in a funny way – “I am not procrastinating, I am doing side quests.” But it’s as easy to get it done as it is to avoid what needs to be done. And let me tell you, those loads of laundry do not disappear or fold themselves if you keep putting them off.
The project is officially done, and I asked Jonathan if it felt good to finish it. The weight was off of him. He shrugged. Probably because I made him finish it after working on other writing homework. Poor kid, he has a mom who writes. I could have done a lot more research and kept asking if he wanted to get into more detail. The answer to both was a hard no.
Now six-year-old Oliver had his own homework this weekend which according to Grammi, he was so excited to have homework like big brother. He received the Star of the Week backpack so he is the star for this upcoming week.
He had a poster to color – which he did first thing on Saturday morning and filled out all his favorites for food, sports, hobbies and more.
Oliver picked out a favorite book for one of the days – “The Pigeon Has to Go to School” by Mo Willems. He still needs to pick an item which tells a little bit about him and create three clues for his classmates to guess.
Also in the Star of the Week backpack was a buddy for the weekend – Curious George. Before the end of the weekend, we write about what Oliver and George did and attach a photo. I took a photo while both were at the Clarkston Boys Varsity Lacrosse game on Saturday. Though Oliver wanted a photo of him and George building Legos, by night time he said the lacrosse photo was fine.
We are also getting into the last month of school and the crunch of all activities – book fair, concerts, field trips and field day. The boys each have a field trip coming up as one heads to Crossroads Village and the other will visit the Detroit Zoo.
But first, the Scholastic Book Fair of course I have signed up to volunteer. I still remember the feeling of going when I was a kid stepping into the school library. I get the same feeling now.