its not working :(

[doublecreamwitheverything]

Its day 4 since we made the decision to home-ed our boys (7,5,2), and its failing miserably. I've just yelled at the 7year old as couldn't get him motivated to come and do some academics (ironic since we wanted to instill the bloody love of learning in them - something we thought school had taken from them).
I just can't get through to him, and motivated enough to sit with me. Nor do I know how to turn it all into something fun and interesting.

DH says to go with an autonomous approach, but I don;t see how I can get him to want to get interested in anything, when all he wants to do is play with his brothers or pester me for the ipad. He doesn't want to do anything even vaguely academic (limited to three r's).
I've read up on this method, and it seems its do with exposure esp outdoor to new things - something I can;t do because of the country we are in. My resources are limited in that respect.

Please can anyone offer any help/tips?

DS is ready for the orchestra audition. If he stops practising it won't be great but he's ready. It's more, do I pay if he gets in in the hopes he starts playing again before next year or do I not pay. It's a lot of money.

Hi, I'm not saying do as I suggest but this is what I would do.

The orchestra need him to be at a particular level and you know as well as I do that if they don't keep at this level they are usually asked to leave. As long as my dd was in the orchestra and I wasn't getting told about a bad attitude, and she wanted to go . I would carry on paying.
If she was getting really bad comments, asked to leave or heart not in it I would reasses, as its really boring if your heart and soul aren't in it, especially playing at your ds level. I think he'll come through and if not well you save alot of money, like I did with older ds's. I know its an emotive subject though and if it were dd I would be hoping she would want to continue, but I think their happiness is the most important thing. It doesn't stop me looking at the other 2 and thinking why didn't you want to. Especially when ds 2 is messing around singing. He still sings like an angel at 17, but wild horses wouldn't make him do anything about it.

Colleger - I think that 11 is old enough to understand that money doesn't grow on trees and that, while you are more than happy to fund the orchestra if he wants it, you need him to make a reasonable committment to it for the year and that means doing his practice, attending the rehearsals, etc. If we give children the authority to make choices about their lives then I don't think there's anything the least bit unfair about also requiring them to take responsibility for those choices and the things that follow from them.

With DS we let him choose every year whether he wanted to continue with music lessons, and as he got older we let him choose about being involved in orchestras, extra sessions for music theory, also having piano lessons, etc. We made it clear that we would support him every inch of the way if music was what he wanted, but that it was his choice and that he needed to put the effort into it if he was serious. Or that he could ease off and just have fun with it if he didn't want the committment.

It's about "I'll respect your choices and priorities but you have to respect mine too", and I think it works if you have a reasonably sensible child and explain things to them in a balanced way. He's now started year 2 of a music degree and busy practicing for orchestra and a string ensemble so I think it was effective for him anyway!

I'll have another conversation about the orchestras tonight. Many thanks :)