Two young women overheard on the bus:
Woman 1 Doesn’t that Zach guy in math class look like the archetypical type?
Woman 2 With his James Dean jacket!
Woman 1 I know. I’m like, “WHAT’S WITH THE JACKET?!”
The horrible haze isn’t going away. So while the trees are losing their leaves and Halloween decorations go up in every store I can barely see roads half a mile from our apartment building and it’s still 26C outside (humidex: 52C). Rumour has it that most of the smog is being shipped in by the wind from New York, Which is discouraging for a lot of reasons, the largest one being even if Toronto outlawed cars and put a hundred windmills out in Lake Ontario, the air would still be unbreathable. As someone who intends to live here for another sixty years, I’m a little depressed.
Here’s a brief summary of yesterday.
Sage Paul, time for learning.
Paul [wail]
…later…
Sage You did an excellent job on that letter to Granny. You just need some punctuation.
Paul [louder wail]
…later…
Sage Next word…error. Let’s see. Great! One little change here, at the end, an O instead of an E.
Paul [flails around and wails in an operetic way for ten minutes]
…later…
Sage We have to go to our two o’clock appointment. Get your shoes on.
Paul [throws himself on the floor and shrieks] You never told me we had to go somewhere!
Sage ASIDE FROM ONCE EVERY HALF HOUR FROM THE MOMENT YOU WOKE UP, YOU’RE RIGHT.
Halfway to our appointment, a quarter of the subway trains stopped running. The TTC had special buses out to take passengers to a working subway stop, but they were filled like buses in Vietnam war movies when the Americans are fleeing the country, the doors barely able to close for the people pressing against them.
Extremely frustrated, I put us on a bus that brought us home and called, only to find out that the appointment had been cancelled anyway. Since Paul was happily working on some project involving paper, scissors, string and lots of tape, I decided to sit and quietly read my book.
An hour later, Paul asked me to come look at his project. He’d made a castle tower with a drawbridge that could be raised or lowered using a string that ran through the top of the tower. So I felt a little less guilty about spending my afternoon reading.
We talked about we could both change about learning time to make it more enjoyable, and Paul said he’d like more science (to which I said, LOOK, if you ever FINISHED any of the OTHER subjects, then we could GET to science which has to be last because it is SO INVOLVED and TAKES SO LONG but in a nicer way) and I asked if he’d like a calendar with each day’s learning mapped out and he said yes.
So when Todd got home I went out and bought a markerboard and some pens, and treated my bruised ego to some sushi, which did not scream at me or throw itself on the floor or practice selective deafness once.
View Comments
Kathy
05 Oct 2005
It is difficult to get through subjects that aren’t your favourites. I think back to high school math class. Maybe if you showed Paul what the science activity for the day would be before he starts in on the his lessons, with the understanding that he only get to the science activity after the other lessons are finished, it would give him incentive to get through the other stuff with less fuss.
I think we all go through this as parents (I sat through this yesterday as my daughter, who is 12, not seven, complained about French) and we also do it ourselves from time to time with tasks we don’t want to do (just maybe not for as long or as loudly).
Andrea R
05 Oct 2005
I’m nodding along with Kathy. :)
Also – what abount chunking up the subjects? Instead of doing them all in one day (which it looks like you’re doing) maybe Math & Science one day, Writing and History the next. Or something like that, pairing something he likes with something he doesn’t. :mrgreen:
Oh, and have I EVER had days like that. Even lately.
Heidi
05 Oct 2005
One organization tool that has stuck with us is a weekly calendar that I started in Sept 2004.
I bought a big blank “calendar” for 25 cents from a teacher store and had it laminated. It’s just a giant gris of 7 squares across and 5 squares down.
Their idea is to fill in one month, using the rows as partial or full weeks.
We use the grid as one week. The top row lists destinations or activities we need to be at around breakfast time. The next four rows show events during morning, lunch, afternoon, and evening.
I write on it with dry-erase marker. Every Sunday, we update it with info from my handy dandy (Canadian) More Time Moms calendar.
The kids can SEE when the whole afternoon is empty or when we have to go somewhere early, or when we’re busy all day, or when Dad is gone to a meeting at night.
When Ganoush wants some time with me, she’ll add “Mom Meeting” to the calendar. Sometimes we craft, sometimes she helps wash dishes. It’s a Mom Meeting.
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