practical bits

Stuffed animals are universal (more or less), right? But here is a classic example of Why We Aren’t Quite Average. Other people’s children carry around bears, mice, turtles, etc.

My children carry around:

A marsupial
and

A giant plush representation of a plague virus. And they love them.

I was reading another homeschooler discussion the other day, where the mom was listing different kinds of homeschoolers:

1. normal ones,
2. mouth-breathing ones,
3. gifted ones,
4. and “the ones we all think are just plain crazy – come on, everybody knows at least ONE.”

We fall firmly into categories 3 and 4.

Why do I love 5-year-olds? Because they are generally unburdened by the constraints of tact. Oh, to be an age where you can freely express your mind and be utterly unconcerned about the reactions of others. (Whereas now I’m merely mildly concerned with the reactions of others.)

So: we took all the kids to see a family theater performance at the Kennedy Center on the weekend. “Unleashed: The Secret Lives of White House Pets” revolves around the uncertainties expressed by a new First Daughter and her beloved but high-strung Chihuahua. They are sent back in time to meet previous White House pets, and in the end gain some confidence and courage, happy happy.

The story takes them through eight (yes, eight) visits, which was a lot even for older kids. The material was stretched pretty thin at times, and was particularly tedious in spots where the author inserted multiple rather dry monologues.

Well, we finally reached Pet Eight, a snake owned by Alice Roosevelt. Unfortunately, halfway through The Snake’s slightly lengthy monologue, The Boy decided he’d had enough.

We were in the SECOND ROW, house left. I was sitting in the middle of our section, when suddenly from my left, The Snake’s monologue is interrupted by:

“BLAAAAAAH BLAH BLAH, BLAH BLAH BLAAAH BLAH.”

My head snapped left, along with every adult in my row and the lady sitting directly in front of me. I could see the Husband turned in his seat, shielding the boy in an attempt to hush him.

I slowly, guiltily returned to face forward, only to be met by grins from the other adults: apparently, The Boy was not alone in his sentiments.

Well, when the new semester started up The Boy and I started off with a schedule where we sat down and did workbook pages every day, twice  a day for about 20 min at a time. This did not bear any fruit, and in fact resulted in a couple of somewhat frustrating days.

Solution: take a break, just cool off and learn other stuff less formally for a while. Outcome: The Boy has suddenly decided that maybe reading is a good idea, and has taken off on a tear of sounding out letters to  make words. I think we may be getting somewhere.