This Is Why I Do Homework

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Every Monday, Little Miss's kindergarten teacher sends home a packet of homework. It's generally six or so pages of things for them to practice - from grouping numbers to figuring out the first letter in a word and the like. I sort of like it, as it allows us to do the homework throughout the week when we have time and Little Miss is in the right mindset to work.

Granted, it's in Spanish, so it takes Little Miss a bit longer than I'd expect to complete it, but it's not rocket science yet. And thankfully, the teacher provides the vocabulary words so that I know that "ojo" starts with and "o" and not an "e" like it does in English (that would be an eye, by the way - I'm learning a bit of Spanish, too!

This week, the homework didn't come home until Tuesday. With Mister Man's OT session on Mondays, Little Miss and I usually knock out the majority of it while he's there. And Tuesday and Wednesday this week, we were occupied doing other things. Thursday my husband kept Little Miss at home while I took Mister Man to tae kwon do. I requested that he be sure Little Miss does her homework, including the vocabulary words (colors and all sorts of things related to apples and trees).

When I arrived home an hour and a half later, I was informed that everything was done. My husband was sitting on the floor in the homework room, essentially napping, and Little Miss was paging through books. I nodded, thanked him, and proceeded to make dinner (yes - I was gone for an hour and a half while my husband was at home after school and I still made dinner).

I noticed yesterday morning that Little Miss's homework was still sitting on her desk, and that it was open to the last page. I took a quick look at it to see what she was doing this week... and I sighed.

On this page, she is supposed to write the first letter of each word in both capital and lowercase. They are focusing on correct formation, meaning they need to start and end at the proper places on the lines, for instance. Interstingly, only one word had both the capital and lower case letter. And few were written properly (she's fully capable of writing them properly, so this is not asking too much).

I decided that maybe I should flip through the rest of the packet. That's when I noticed this page.

It's simple enough - simply write in the missing numbers - and Little Miss loves to count, so knowing her numbers is an easy thing for her. Note that she simply forgot to complete one of the numbers. It wasn't because she didn't know how; she simply didn't see it.

Now, I'm not a parent who believes in doing homework for my wee ones, but I absolutely believe in looking over what they've done and pointing out where they need to fix things. Doing something for the sake of doing it rather than to reinforce what you've learned just doesn't seem to make sense to me - yet.

I'm somewhat entertained that my husband - who is a teacher - simply points her at the homework, tells her the directions, and then assumes she's done when she says she is without veryifying anything. Once the wee ones are older and should have proper study habits developed, I'll likely go much closer to this route.

But for now, with Little Miss and Mister Man in early elementary? I'll be making sure they do their homework - and do it right.

I Thought I Had More Time

There is a time in childrens' lives that every parent dreads. Ok, so to be honest, there are lots of moments that parents dread. We just continue to think they'll never come.

I reached a milestone this week that I thought I had years to reach. Years. Lots of them.

I had no idea that I'd be stumped by kindergarten homework.

Yes, that's right. I was unable to help my kindergartener with his homework. I couldn't figure it out, and even my husband is struggling.

This does not bode well for his grades in high school. *sigh* But I have to give myself a little bit of a reprieve. Space has never been my best subject. There are certain things that I just don't like and therefore never learned anything about -- Mister Man's obsession of dinosaurs is my other big disinterest.

This week, the kindergarteners are charged with watching the night skies. Thank you, teacher, who decided to do the space unit in January when it's freezing (literally) outside instead of waiting until ohhh I don't know, May!

Not only do they need to watch the night sky, but they need to identify it.

Moon? Check.

Big Dipper? Check. (Whoo, go me!)

Little Dipper? Uhhhh, yeah.

Casseopeia? Oh, please.

Orion? Are you kidding me?!

I've never figured out constellations. They just don't make sense to me. They are stars in the sky, and they're pretty. That's about as far as my stargazing knowledge goes.

But this week, I'm spending my time staring at a constellation map and comparing it to the sky. Then I turn my map around and squint to see if that helps. I turn it a bit further and then sigh in frustration.

Did I also mention that we're in a new moon phase, which means there isn't much of a moon to see? At least that makes drawing the moon easy. And thankfully, we don't have to draw the other constellations, just say if we could see them or not.

Tonight I was exceedingly grateful that it was cloudy. We walked outside, saw no stars, turned around, and I know we got the answers right for once!

What was the first homework that stumped you?

Happy Earth Day!

I can’t believe this is the 39th anniversary of Earth Day today. I think the first time I ever heard about Earth Day was the 20th anniversary of it, which puts that at 1989, if my math is right. I can’t figure out if it’s gotten that much bigger and more important since then or just that where I grew up didn’t care about it.

Either way, this year both my kids’ preschools (yes, they go to different preschools) celebrated it this year.

Little Miss was easy. She was supposed to wear green to school. For St Patrick’s Day, I had a really hard time finding something green to wear. We settled on something in the green family. Learning from that, she now has a green shirt that we were able to wear today – and I remembered to put it on her, more impressively!

When I picked her up from preschool today, she had a little flower (begonia, I believe?) that she’d planted – yes, with the teacher’s help – in the bottom half of a pop bottle. I’m sort of bummed. She had a choice between pink, purple, and red. Apparently she has a new favorite color, and it isn’t purple anymore. I have some indoctrinating to do!

Mister Man, on the other hand, wasn’t required to wear green today, although he did anyway for the fun of it. For him, I’ve been supposed to send clean recyclable items into school for him to turn into art, I believe. I always feel a bit weird when I send in items like that, as the school gets a real glimpse of our lives. What exactly does a Kleenex box, a quart yogurt container, newspaper, an egg carton, a paper towel roll, and the box from my turkey bacon say about me and my family?

His class went one better. He got a homework assignment that’s due tomorrow. He has a big blue circle that he’s supposed to decorate. We haven’t done it yet because we can’t decide how to decorate it. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, right? He’s only in preschool and we’re already to that stage. We’re in big trouble!

The other part of his assignment is that he’s supposed to write down his “wish for the world” on a piece of paper that goes with the blue circle. His wish started out for the Thomas toys that he doesn’t have.

Me: Uhhh, Mister Man. The wish is supposed to be something you want for the entire world.
Mister Man: Then I want you and Grandma and Grandpa and Daddy to have some new trains, too.
Me: That’s not quite what I meant. The wish is something that everyone would want that would help them.
Mister Man: Ok, then Thomas stickers, too.
Me: Huh.
Mister Man: Yeah, I want them to have stickers, too.
Me: So you mean that you want all of the children of the world to have Thomas toys and stickers to play with?
Mister Man: I don’t know.
Me: Usually, the wish for the world would be something that people want but don’t have like a warm blanket at night or dinner in their tummy so they aren’t hungry all the time or enough water to drink so they aren’t thirsty or a house to keep them warm and safe or something like that.
Mister Man: My wish is to have Thomas trains. And stickers. Victor’s (yes, name changed) wish is for Spiderman.
Me: That’s an interesting wish.

That tells me two things right that. First, I’m not the only mom who’s having a hard time explaining Earth Day and the wish for the world to 4 and 5 year olds. That made me feel a bit better. And second, everyone else already has their homework turned in. I guess I need to get my act in gear!

And my Earth Day? I never did figure out a grand gesture that didn’t seem hollow or empty.