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.

I live out by the left elbow of a leftist county, located in an equally leftist state. (Okay, to be fair, it’s not true that the entire state is leftist. Just the two most populous counties, which unfortunately leaves the other 22 in the lurch.)

The husband hasn’t quite acclimated himself to the everyday nonsense that passes for liberal ideology around here. I grew up here (not in the elbow – I was much closer to the armpit) so I’ve developed something of an immunity (mostly in the form of ignoring that which you cannot change, namely the attitudes of one’s friends and neighbors. And family.) On the other hand, there are days when even my well-callused brain cannot ignore the rank idiocy that passes through my sphere:

So, Pookus brings home a class newsletter this week announcing the upcoming activities to celebrate “Peace Week”. This is the time of year where the entire school has to give up instructional time to “celebrate peace”. Now, I don’t mind celebrating peace. I think peace is a great thing. But observe:

…as part of our Peace Week activities, we will be viewing An Inconvenient Truth…

Ummm… WTF? They’re also viewing a movie about a Mexican boy who illegally enters the US to reunite with his mother… who is already here illegally. Husband says not to fly off the handle, a movie about illegal immigrants may be a good story anyway – but I’m inclined toward the They’re Indoctrinating The Kids Again Damnit argument. It’s not like there isn’t already a demonstrated history of it.

First, on the subject of Peace Week (which is scheduled specifically to coincide with MLK’s birthday): Hey! People! Mr. King was about civil rights, not peace. Yes, he achieved his goal using non-violent methods, and he did it peacefully… but by canning it as peace, y’all are really missing the point of his struggle.

I can only guess that the logic process (if you can call it logic) went like this:

Mr. Gore : awarded the Nobel Peace Prize :: Gore : represents peace

It’s a stretch, but so much fascist ideology is. I wonder if any of them know that the Peace Prize is the only one that the Swedes don’t award? (The Norwegians do.) And by the way, they gave that same prize to YASSER ARAFAT. Boy, there’s someone who represents peaceful measures.

If you’re going to make the kids sit through two days of movies to honor MLK’s struggle, hmm, let’s see, what’s a movie about another civil rights leader who achieved his goals using peaceful means, and has a worldwide reputation… GHANDI, maybe?

I could go on for pages about idiots, idiots who don’t bother to read history, idiots who don’t bother to read current events, idiots who don’t connect the dots between current events, history, and common sense – but I’ll just leave it as URRRRRGGGGGHH. Thank you for listening.

The older ones are back to the cinderblock, but Little Man and I are doing it at home. I think I pushed too much at him on day 1; but after breaking up the workbook time into leetle pieces separated by healthy doses of LEGO breaks and general runabout, and it’s going much better. I’m also seeing certain things that fit with the LM Viewed As Trouble Because He’s Caught Up A Little Too Much With Semantics: We were doing “Follow the directions” section in a workbook and the instruction was, “Draw a box around this object.” Little Man gives me a concerned look and says, “That’s gonna be hard.” Further probing reveals that he thinks he’s being told to draw a 3-D representation of a box.

I suddenly see quickly disintegrating progression of events beginning with a simple misunderstanding between LM and his classroom teacher, who has repeatedly said that she “Just doesn’t have time to give him the individual attention he seems to require.” Which I find ironic, given that we put him in a private school for exactly their advertised “personalized attention”.

Pookus came home from school after Day 1 and asked him, “How was your first day of homeschool?”

LM paused to consider, then answered, “Not good.”

Pookus was surprised. “Why not?”

“Because we didn’t go anywhere.”

Apparently Little Man expected us to be taking a  lot more field trips, and immediately. I think the next step is for him to help plan field trips. Heck, he’s already planning family meals. He’s taken up cooking with me. Actually, he’s always been interested; it’s just that we’re finally in a position where I have the time to let him participate. This past week, he organized two family dinners (sloppy joes, baked potatoes) and one breakfast (bagel/apple/cheese sandwiches). I can see myself writing in the following week’s agenda: dinosaurs, egg cracking.

I haven’t even formally begun to homeschool my child, but I have already been on the receiving end of the dreaded S question:

“Aren’t you worried about socialization?”

I’m starting a running tally. I have a theory that, once news of our homeschooling journey makes the rounds, the initial S question will die off and hopefully waddle away to the desmenses of busybodies we happen to meet in public. (All you veteran homeschoolers can stop laughing and get off the floor, now. Thanks.)

January: 2

I figure I might as well also compile the assorted possible responses to the question, “How will you socialize your child?”

My current favorite:
“I won’t; I plan to lock him in a windowless room until he’s 18 and then let him out with a sharp pointy stick.”