I took this picture yesterday at five o’clock, otherwise known as the Exact Middle of Homework Time.
Otherwise known as hell.
Otherwise known as the reason I should really start drinking again.
Can I get an amen?
Those of you not amen-ing either 1) don’t have kids with homework or 2) are already too drunk from Homework Time at your own house to not slur your words.
Or, maybe your kids LOVE their homework. Perhaps they quietly slip into their bedrooms to challenge themselves with sight words and fast facts and long story problems that contain superfluous information and the need to convert decimals and SHOW ALL THEIR WORK.
This is not the Hergenrader kids.
I mean, we have challenges all right, but totally different than the kids wanting to challenge themselves.
Challenge #1: Elisabeth does, actually, like doing her homework. Look at this picture, see how she’s sitting with me. We’re working on sight words. Elisabeth LOVES to work on sight words. So, why the need for wine? Because she has some weird quirks with the sight words. When I hold up the word, she doesn’t like to just say the word, she likes to say a paragraph that SURREPTITIOUSLY contains the word. When I hear it, I’m supposed to tickle her. Only she doesn’t really know her sight words, so she often just talks and talks saying guesses and waiting for me to tickle her.
Example:
The word is SAW.
Elisabeth: Mommy, I love to eat ice cream. I WAS trying to eat chocolate ice cream, but I WAS afraid it was vanilla. So I WAS at Jason’s Deli. WAS, I said.
Me: The word isn’t WAS. Try again.
Elisabeth: The word is WAS. You’re wrong. Here, I’ll start another story. I WAS swinging….
This goes on and on until she gets through all ONE HUNDRED sight words.
It’s a sneaky attempt to keep my attention focused on her for the entire homework time.
This is funny (and terribly inconvenient) because that’s also Catie’s goal. Her magic feather to confidently do her homework is for me to sit next to her. She loves to talk through every step she’s doing. As soon as I’m distracted, she deflates. I’m just about ready to train Nate to sit next to her and nod his head and utter encouraging words to free me up to listen to Elisabeth’s sight word paragraphs.
This would also free me up to help Sam. Contrary to the girls, who love me to focus completely on them, Sam would prefer to disappear during Homework Time. You’ll notice in the above picture that Sam is not, actually, working on the worksheet on the picnic table. Instead, he is doing whoknowswhat by the fence. He is always doing whoknowswhat during homework time.
Watching him is almost like watching a comedy routine. After much prompting to GET BUSY, he drops his pencil. He spends the next five minutes crawling on the floor and searching for it. Then he bumps his head. And goes to the freezer to get ice for his head. And then he remembers he needs a snack.
And you get the idea.
And then I look at the time and see we still have piles of homework to go before we eat.
And I say, “Amen.”
-I hate sight words and homework with every fiber of my being. After Caden was sick we got FOURTEEN pieces of paper sent home, in addition to our daily sight words and reading book.
-Caden and Sam could be best friends… And probably would never be allowed to sit near each other in a classroom. His ability to focus on ANYTHING but what we’re supposed to be doing amazes me. I feel like Caden’s daily story could be a version of If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.
-Nate can totally do that for you… Micah is so used to homework and sight words that he holds up flash cards and says “Good job!” “Again!” (Try again) or “Right!” after anything you say.