My second child bolts up in the morning, gets dressed and makes his bed. My first child rolls out of bed at the last minute and leaves everything everywhere. My second child sits at the dining room table quietly doing all or most of his borrow-a-book homework the day after it is assigned, knowing … [Read more...]
Welcome Back Homework Blues
A consistent homework strategy is something we struggle with in our household. We have tried various forms of incentive programs, better service delivery, more robust and detailed calendars and schedules, pens with smelly ink, pencils that look like giraffes, enhanced complementary computer time, … [Read more...]
FotoFriday – Full Circle
I had a very clear full circle moment last night as I was helping my almost-12 year old "antique" paper for his social studies project. I remember doing the exact same activity for school with my Mum when I was his age. When I see my kids doing the same things I did as a child...it's incredibly … [Read more...]
Whatever happened to “My dog ate my homework?”
Well by now most of you already know what a handful Ryley is, but the past few weeks have been tiresome.After months of waiting for speech therapy it finally began. The first week was great. He was excited and really tried hard in his session. The second week....... well the … [Read more...]
Channelling Martha
My son came home last week with assignment called "Structure". It required him to make something, from scratch, using raw materials. The teacher also wanted to see the design, the plan and the resources. As you can imagine, I was nervous.I'm not crafty and I'm not very good at building … [Read more...]
Homework Horrors
I'd be willing to bet that even back in the Roman Empire parents were throwing up their hands in frustration at their children's unwillingness to take out their wax tablets and practice writing their numerals; and in the ensuing centuries not much has changed, has it?I suppose there have been some … [Read more...]
The Dos and Don’ts of How to Be Involved in Your Child’s School Life
Guess what? As your child's teacher, you and I have something very special in common. And no, it is not that we both have a higher than normal tolerance for cleaning snotty noses. It is that we both care so much about our kids and want nothing more for them to succeed and be … [Read more...]
How Extracurricular Actitivies Help Students
Close your eyes and think about when you were in school. How many days do you really remember? Of those days, how many of them involve being taught fractions or pronouns? When I tried this experiment, I came up with about 2-dozen total, with not one being an English, Math, or French … [Read more...]
mouths of babes
A little boy doing his math homework is counting out loud-'Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven... Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine...'His mother overhearing gasped, "What are you doing?""Math homework, mom"After a long silence-"Ummm, I think your teacher was saying "Two plus five, … [Read more...]
Weekend Update – Grateful For…
Well it's Thanksgiving weekend and everybody is talking about what they want to give thanks for.So I will to. I am going to condense it to things I am grateful for this week.I am grateful that we finally figured out a working strategy to get Cuyler to willingly do his homework. A visual … [Read more...]