Where’s Your Pencil?

We homeschool.  We buy pencils. We buy lots and lots of pencils. We buy pencils by the case, big cases of fancy, Ticonderoga pencils, the ones that sharpen nicely, have nice strong leads that don’t break, pencils that last a long time—well theoretically they would last a long time, but I will never find out if that’s true, because once I sharpen one of these pencils, they get sucked into the black hole that I’m convinced we have in our house.  

Yes, I can always find a brand-spankin’, new pencil in the top drawer of my desk, an everlasting supply of pencils.  And all would be well if I didn’t give them to the children. 

“Googie, here is your phonics assignment for the day, and a pencil.  Go work on this in the other room.  I’ll check with you in about fifteen minutes to see how you’re doing, okay?” I say to my son as I hand him a freshly sharpened pencil and his phonics page.

“Uh, huh,” he says and quickly scampers away.  Fifteen minutes later, I go searching for him all over the house.  Surprisingly, he’s not in the other room.  Pencil, phonics page, and child have all gone AWOL.  And, no, I really didn’t expect to find him in the room, but a mom can dream, a mom can believe, a mom can hope, that her child will actually listen to her.  After another fifteen minutes of searching, I find the child hiding in the bathroom, under a blanket, in the bathtub (no, he didn’t fill the tub with water), reading a book about (his current obsession) astronomy.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing”

“Where’s your phonics page?”

“I don’t know,” he says, still under the blanket.  Realizing that asking him to try to find the phonics page and the pencil would waste a few hours, I decide to go looking for them myself. Fifteen minutes later I find the phonics page under a pile of books in the family room, but the pencil is nowhere to be seen. 

 

“Fine,” I say.  “Here is your phonics page and here is another pencil.  Let’s go over to the other room to work on the page together.”  I follow him to the other room. Ha! I drag him to the other room. 

  

He decides that he wants to sit on the floor to work on his phonics page; I sit on a chair right next to him and pretend to read a book in order to make sure that he’s focused on his work.  Five minutes later I look down to check on him.  “So, how much have you gotten done?”

“I’m almost done,” he says.  I check his page and notice that he has barely started the assignment.

“Where’s your pencil?” I ask.

“What pencil?”

“The one I just gave you.”

My Children, the Space Cadets

I am the proud mother of two bona fide space cadets.  This past weekend Googie’s Cub Scout pack had an astronomy presentation for the astronomy belt loop, a type of award that Cub Scouts can earn. The program was going to start with a presentation and would conclude with some field work to give everyone a chance to use their telescopes. 

When we arrived, the scouts were already sitting on the floor in the front of the room while the adults were sitting behind them. The room was packed.  You could feel the excitement in the air.  Everyone that had a telescope had brought it.  Astronomy is one of Bubba’s hobbies so he brought some of his astronomy books and his six-inch Dobsonian telescope.  As soon as we walked in, Googie decided that he would be sitting in the very front of the room and since Bubba is a Den Chief, he was standing to the side with the leaders.  Normally I like to sit next to my children so I can remind them to keep quiet but all the adult seats close to the front of the room were taken.  This meant that I was as far in the back of the room as possible while still being in the same room.  

The man giving the lecture was very knowledgeable.  His presentation was clear and the scouts were very interested in what he had to say, especially mine as everyone there found out.  Now, for fun, my children are constantly reading books about astronomy and watching documentaries about space.  They don’t know much about popular music, video games or T.V. shows, but they can tell you everything you ever wanted to know (or not know) about astronomy.  Homeschooled children are weird that way, especially hyperactive or autistic ones.  The presentation started and so did my children.  They kept answering the questions and blurting out facts.  The leaders were trying really hard to get them to be quiet and give the other children and the presenter a chance to speak. Each time I heard one of my children’s name being called, I kept wanting to crawl and hide under the table.  Wait, I think I actually did crawl under the table. There was no stifling their enthusiasm.  They were convinced that they knew all about astronomy and they were going to let everyone there know it. 

Finally, we got a chance to go outside and look through the telescopes.  Although it was very windy that night, it was clear and cool and we were able to see quite a bit.  We were able to see Jupiter on the horizon with three of its four viewable moons.  We also saw the Orion nebula, the Pleiades cluster, and the craters on our moon.  (Yikes, it sure sounds like I know what I'm talking about!  Actually, Bubba filled me in on the details.) This wasn’t too bad for a night of stargazing in the city.  By then it was getting late so we had to pack up and leave.  I wanted to duck out ASAP when the presentation was over, but my space cadets didn’t let me.  They wanted to stick around and keep bombarding the man giving the presentation with questions and facts about space. I could see the poor man’s pleading eyes searching for mercy.  I literally had to drag each of my space cadets, one at a time, out of there by the elbow.  After that night I couldn't wait to go home to get some space.  Yes, beam me up Scotty…and hurry!

Multiplication with Regrouping

Eight-year old Googie was having problems getting his math assignment completed.  The topic was multiplication with regrouping.  He had to multiply a three-digit number by a one-digit number, and regroup or "carry over" the tens place of the answer.  His assignment consisted of two sheets.  One sheet had 32 problems

and the other sheet had 8 word problems

He started to cry when I told him that this was his assignment.  "It's too hard, Mom."  So I decided to do something to get him to complete his assignment.  Part of the beauty of homeschooling is that we can adapt the assignment.  First, I turned this into a two-day assignment. Then, I rewrote the problems sideways on pieces of notebook paper.  This helped him to keep his digits in the right place value position. 

Next, instead of having him regroup the tens place digits of his answers above the numbers, I had him write them below.

This made all the difference.  He was able to complete the entire assignment without any incident.  Of course, it also helped that I fashioned a study carrel out of my cardboard cutting board to help him stay on task.

He really enjoyed this, but I don't think that I'll be getting my cutting board back.

Anyway, not only was he able to complete his math in a timely manner and with a good attitude, he was able to finish all his other subjects, plus he earned the privilege to watch a movie at the end of the day.  I would say that it was a good day.