ETC assignment vs Mom, race of the century!

The kids have stumbled onto the world of Harry Potter movies and are enthralled. (Yay!) A few days ago they were asking to watch one of the movies and I said that first Sayer had to do her phonics assignment - 5 pages. I handed her the book over her groans of protest and asked if she thought she could do the pages before I got the movie started. And the race was on!

I moved in s.l.o.w. m.o.t.i.o.n. to put away the disc that had been in the DVD player and to sort out a few other discs that needed to be put back in their cases. Sayer had 2 pages done. I continued in slow motion while I got out the new movie and inched it toward the player. The third page was done. I put the case away before turning to reach s.l.o.w.l.y. for the button to load the movie. Page 4 was done. The FBI screen came on, and the long montage of scenes that leads to the menu. Page 5 involved a lot of writing and she was slightly distracted by the montage. I turned off the TV and the last page was done about 1.5 minutes later.

Wow. No fuss, no muss. And it's worked two more times since then, once for another HP movie, and today for a Magic School Bus DVD. Yippee!

Oh, and two out of the three times that we've had these races, in spite of her trying to do things quickly for the promised reward, she's taken the time to do extra pages. Yesterday she did two, today she did three :)