The other day I was reading about a summer camp, and the phrase "middle childhood" came up, in reference to the boy's age group. I was stricken with a sense of panic and guilt about where the time has gone, and how I've spent more time criticizing him than playing with him lately, and how little time I have left with my child while he still prefers our company to that of all other people. As sociable and outgoing as he is, he'd still rather be home with us. Last night he assured me that if for some reason he wasn't my kid, whwnever he would see me, he would still say, "I wish she were my mama." He's told me variations of this sentiment for years, but it's still sweet every time.

Still contemplating part-time homeschooling for him for the remainder of the year. Looking at parochial school for next year, since the two Montessori schools we like are both filled. He doesn't want religious education but I think it would be a good way to understand the underpinnings of Western civilization (yes, I am that nerdy) and as long as they don't tell him he'll burn in hell if he doesn't believe, I'm okay with some religious instruction. Though parochial school was certainly never part of the game plan, public school has had two years to show me their stuff, and I am completely unimpressed. I am willing to buy him an average class size of 11.8 kids, oh yes I am.

Snow days every single day last week. We had 2" of snow in our yard. This part of the country is pathetic.

Tags: education, grade school, parenting

Yes, please, for the love of all that is holy, please adhere to rule #5.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/24/how-to-choose-a-typeface/#more-77398

To wit:

• Don’t use Papyrus just because your topic is “ancient” in some way, especially if it’s about Ancient Egypt. (Better yet, don’t use Papyrus at all)
• Don’t use Comic Sans just because your topic is humorous. (Better yet, don’t use Comic Sans at all)
• Don’t use Lithos just because your topic is about Greek restaurants.
• Don’t use Futura just because your topic deals with “the future”.

If Comic Sans were obliterated from every computer in the whole world, I could die a happy woman. I can't count the number of times I've seen it used in public informational/educational materials because it's a "friendly" font. Well, guess what, bureaucrats, dressing boring and horribly written copy in cheap, tawdry clothing doesn't magically make it readable. Garbage in, garbage out.

Michael says I'm inordinately obsessed with fonts, but since stumbling across Smashing Magazine, I know I am the lowliest of acolytes seeking Truth in the temple of fonts. I can't believe I've never seen their stuff before.

Tags: fonts

I think kiddo's best friend doesn't want to be friends with him anymore. There have been some signs over the last few weeks, but today, when the friend was slinking along the side of the playground, trying to avoid him, and then snapped at kiddo, "Stop running!" when kiddo ran up to him ... well, that was a pretty blatant signal to me. The poor boy has been drawing sad pictures lately and it's been weighing on me.

I wish everyone in the world would value kiddo as much as I do. His default state is joy, and I grieve every time the world does something to beat that out of him. He has lots of friends, but he really, really liked this boy. I know he has to learn this lesson sometime, but I hate watching it.

Tags: friends, grade school, parenting

Read some of the stories about Sandusky today, and now I am just WTF about the sheer idiocy and indecency of the Penn State administration. So your defensive coordinator is accused of sexually assaulting pre-teen boys, and your response is: "Don't do it on school property"? For real?

Yeah, maybe you didn't know all the details that the grand jury included in their findings. So what? When you're more interested in protecting your football program, major revenue center or not, than protecting children, then you are morally bankrupt. How do you live with yourself?

And when there are eight known victims, it's obvious that there are many, many more.  I wonder that the mother of one of the victims, who is described as confronting Sandusky, did not pick up the phone and call the local/national paper to report Penn State's lack of follow-through. If it were my child, I would have stopped at nothing to make sure the bastard was punished. If I didn't just do it myself.

Like so much of the news, this just sickens me.

Edit: And for those of you on Ravelry, this post is also sickening:

http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/remrants/1898649/1-25#2

Husband says the football team needs the coaching staff and their chances of getting drafted are in jeopardy. Wife says coaches should not get a free pass. Husband responds, well, you were abused for 10 years and you turned out okay.

Holy shit.

Tags: outrage

Apparently the best way to motivate your child to learn multiplication is through KenKen. Who knew? Thanks for a job well done, megastoat and kcobweb!

Also, the best way to teach the concept of division is to say, "If we had six pieces of candy, and you, daddy, and I each got the same amount, how much would we each get?" Candy equity, that's what it's all about.

No school today for staff in-service, which I had no idea about till two days ago, so my carefully planned schedule that would have allowed me to take the weekend off completely went out the window. Argh, I was so close to being rewarded for planning ahead!

Tags: education, grade school, hbknits, parenting

I accosted the parent of a girl who used to be in kiddo's classroom but is now going to private school. What she told me about interactions with the teacher and the principal confirmed my own experience as well as adding safety concerns to the list. Her daughter was choked by another kid, after which he got an aide assigned to him fulltime, but his parents were not notified until the other mom told them on the playground. Totally unacceptable.

The girl is going to the private school at the top of our list, but her mom thought she had gotten the last available spot. Another parent told me that part-time enrollment is allowable under state law as part of a homeschooling program.

I'm still pretty sure that I'm not a natural homeschooler, but I am fed up with this crap. If he can't get into a private school (and my parents, without prompting, offered to pay half his tuition, because they too were concerned when I described his classroom situation), then I am going to suck it up and learn how to homeschool. I'll be starting my research this week.

Oh, and I found out why there are so many disruptive kids in his class. It's so the OT specialist (who really is impressive) only has to go to one classroom. Organizationally, sure, that makes sense, but it is hell for the kids who have to put up with that day in and day out. Unbalanced and unfair.

Tags: education, grade school, parenting
Current Mood: angry

After some initial feelers, I was officially invited to join Universal Mama today. Funny how it would have been so exciting to get an invite a year or two ago, but now it's just another selling venue to me. I define success a lot differently these days.

Volunteered today in Evan's classroom for the second time. We're thinking about private school. His teacher seems way more focused on getting kids to behave properly and follow instructions than on actual teaching. I realize there is a relationship there, but I have the definite impression that her end goal is a kid who toes the line, not one who has learned something. Michael went to curriculum night last week (no kids, so I stayed home with Evan) and he came back with the same impression. Evan knows all this crap already. He is teaching himself how to multiply, I don't know where he's getting this. He is already at the reading level that he's supposed to be at by the end of 1st grade.

And he got stuck in the dumb class again, for the second year in a row. I expected it last year, because most of the kids with involved parents (or at least two working ones) were in FT kindy last year, which you had to pay extra for. But this year, too? There are three kids who have OT during school hours in his class, and zero in the other class. Today in the classroom, there was the teacher, her student teacher (who seems pretty uninterested in teaching or engaging with the kids, so why is she even in training?), two OT specialists (basically assigned to the three most disruptive kids), and me. Four adults to ride herd on the small groups while the teacher worked one-on-one with about half the kids on reading. Sure, it's great there are so many adults, but the fact that she *needs* so many just to get anything accomplished along teaching lines is troubling.

She has a parent volunteer every day who does the reading-related exercise. Each kid makes their own book that they add to each day. So this week it's about the change from summer to autumn. Today they cut out a green tree, and tomorrow they'll probably add yellow or red leaves on the next page. From kindergarten last year, I know perfectly well that there are kids who can't read. So I help some of the kids sound out words. We talk about what letter/letter combination makes which sounds, and I try to show them relationships between words. Like how "tree" and "green" look similar, so they're likely to sound similar too. I pin down kids who try to get away with just reciting what they've heard other kids read.

This is not what the teacher does. She reads the two sentences that go with the picture, pointing to each word as she reads. Then she says, "Good reading!" and sends them off to the next work station.

So how is this helping them learn? I know she is freaking busy with civilizing some of these wild beasts, and that she spends half her day managing this one kid, Joey, who has already been held back at least once. The first day I volunteered, I was trying to explain something to him and he said, "Who cares?" Jesus Christ, at 8 he already has this attitude? (He says he's 10 years old, but I don't think he's been held back *that* many times.) I had a flash of what his future life would be like: sitting in front of the TV in his undershirt, drinking Bud Light and yelling at his five kids. He is one of the OT kids--screams all the time, calls other kids boneheads, zero focus, obstinate as a mule, no manners.

Michael said during curriculum night, she said that she wants to make reading a positive experience so she never pressures them. For fuck's sake, lady, do you really think it's doing them a favor to protect their egos by never teaching them anything?

During Evan's individual reading time with her today, she gave him the same book choices that the slowest non-readers get. She has access to his records. You'd think she could at least offer him something challenging during one-on-one time. When else is he going to get anything at his level?

It's interesting that Michael is the one who brought up private school again. I was all for it when Evan was younger, and Michael said, "Let's wait and see how the public schools are." Now he's the one who's talking about it.

And the other thing that bothers me is that while I was spending time teaching phonics to the slowest readers, the good readers were left to their own devices. Evan was one of about five who did the reading exercise completely under their own direction. And because they weren't waving scissors in other kids' eyes, squirting glue all over the table, and otherwise minding their own business, they got zero attention from me. It just sucks that it's all about the lowest common denominator and the kids who need a higher bar aren't getting it.

Tags: education, grade school, parenting

We can never leave this house. The garbage truck pulled up while I was sitting at the front window, eating a croissant, and the big mechanical arm reached out, snapped up the can, and heaved its contents into the truck. I had this sudden flashback to when kiddo was between 1 and 2, when the advent of the garbage truck was the highlight of his week, and how he'd run to the window as soon as I announced that I could hear the truck. He'd sit right in that chair, eagerly waiting, his eyes shining as the arm hoisted up the can. He'd press up against the window, straining to watch as the truck moved down the line of cans on the street.

Now of course trucks are nothing special and he's growing up faster than I can believe. I don't think I could ever move away from this house (aside from the fact that our mortgage has just 9 years left at 3.6% and we'd be crazy to leave) because here, kiddo will always be little.

Tags: parenting

Kiddo was invited to a birthday party this afternoon. After he got out of his bath this morning, he got dressed and presented himself to me, tidily attired in the shirt he wore to a family wedding last summer and never since. "Look, mama, I wanted to look good so I combed my hair." He had carefully parted his hair on the side, which he's never done before.

My little boy, wanting to look good for his friends. So sweet.

Tags: grade school, parenting

I really need to stop reading casting news and movie updates. They make my blood boil. Latest announcement is that they're making the movie "steamier" and giving the "heartthrob" (presumably Gale) more airtime in the first movie, in order to play up the love triangle. BITE ME. Believe it or not, Hollywood, a story with a teenage girl as protagonist does not automatically require her to be torn between two lovers. The so-called love triangle is nothing compared to all the other levels and themes in that story.

My, aren't we feeling hostile today?

In other news, dyeing for my show in two weeks is going pretty well. It's the show that last year gave me back my business mojo (if it hadn't gone well, I had intended to close up shop) so I'm excited to go again and expect to do reasonably well. Plus I think my dyed spinning fiber just gets better all the time, if that doesn't sound bigheaded, but the way people react to it, I think it's a realistic assessment.

It's 12:30 and I have nothing do-or-die to work on. I could go to bed. In fact, I could've gone to bed half an hour ago, except that my poor internal clock has suffered permanent damage from so many late nights, and my body spends most of the day half asleep, and perks up at 8 p.m. There's work that I could do, but nothing that I *have* to do. What a weird feeling.

And I just watched BBC's rebooting of Sherlock last week. Awesome series. If you haven't already seen it, rundon'twalk to your closest Netflix viewing station.

Tags: books, hbknits, movies, tv