The Habit of Finishing

We are using "Laying Down the Rails for Children" for habit training, and we always end a habit with some kind of celebration. This time the celebration was for mom ~ I told the kids I would blog the projects that they finished. They didn't feel that was sufficient celebration for themselves, so I've allocated last Thursday's trip to Saweet Cupcakes as their treat.

Habit training does not, of course, only happen during the period of using the lessons from LDtRfC (I like calling it Baby Rails myself, the name Sonya affectionately refers to it). What the lessons do for me is call my attention and the kids' attention to the habit so that we are more apt to think of it throughout the day and practice it.

So, Finishing was about having Integrity in finishing what you start. There were also good discussions about what is worthwhile to pursue and when are good times to quit something that is not worth finishing or shouldn't have been started in the first place. The kids each chose a project that would be theirs to finish during this time period.

Elizabeth made special cupcakes for a contest at a youth event in town. She spent about 5 hours on them and did the whole thing on her own. She won.

Phoebe worked on a paint-by-number of a horse. I helped her with it because it was an activity we could do together (and she's always asking me to play with her) and because I really, really love paint-by-numbers for some odd reason.

And Jonathan finished as much as he could on his sun-dial clock. We'll have to wait for summer for longer daylight hours. I must say that he was the least motivated to finish his project. I would normally be okay with that since it was his idea to try it out in the first place, but since we had decided this was an official Finishing task, he had to finish. It was kind of neat. We discovered a double shadow one day. The light reflects off the house and makes a lighter shadow coming opposite of the sun. I never knew it did that.