Eyes on the Prize

With spring finally here, the rains finally behind us (I think), and the beginning of summer not too far off, it’s been very hard to get the children focused on their homeschool.  Googie has been making great progress in his schoolwork all year long and only has about three or four weeks of lessons to complete.   Bubba has finally started to make some progress in his homeschool too.  But, all of a sudden, like Newton’s First Law of Motion, my children’s homeschooling motion is being acted upon by the external force of spring weather.

 

Just when they can actually see the prize: a summer filled with no school work, no cares, and endless fun; they start to dawdle, complain and waste time.  What would've taken one day to complete before the change in weather, is now taking almost a week to complete.  So, like Violet Beauregarde’s mother in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I find myself saying, “Eyes on the Prize, Violet.  Eyes on the Prize.” And when they start to complain that the work toward the end of the school year is always the hardest, I just smile and, like Willie Wonka told Violet in the movie, I  say, “Confidence is key.”

What I need is another force to act upon my inert children.  A force greater than the wonderful spring weather that we’ve been having.  I’ve tried threatening them with summer homeschool, but to them it just sounds like an empty threat.  I either need to find a way to make the threat more convincing, or I need to find something else: a different force.  The question is: what could that possibly be?