“We should sit down and do school
now,” I thought.
It's Monday. Monday Math Day! Why
not? That sounds fun.
Right?
Surely some math should be done.
The math workbooks and freshly
sharpened pencils laid out
on the table gleamed shiny and
inviting.
But my daughter was busy making
patterns with her blocks
and my son had pulled out his new $3
calculator and wanted me
to quiz him with addition and
subtraction problems
so he could come up with answers in his
head
and then check them on the calculator
to see if he was right.
Math books...after lunch maybe?
But during lunch we got to talking
about birthdays
and the children wanted to pull out
their calendars and figure out
how many days til each new birthday
appeared.
Daddy's birthday is next so what could
we get as a gift?
Well, then the piggy banks came out and
they had to count
their money and then we pulled out a
piece of paper and figured out how
much more money we'd need to buy that
special thing
they want for Daddy's birthday.
Presents aside, what kind of cake?
Well, I'd been thinking of this one but
we need to test it first and
make sure it tastes good, so of course
they wanted to help make the test cake,
count out the eggs before cracking, and
measure all the ingredients.
Our day was gone, and the math books
sat unopened.
Maybe next time.
“We should sit down and do school
now,” I thought.
It's Tuesday, and I'm already tired,
but....
Surely a bit of music appreciation
wouldn't be too hard to fit in.
That bulletin board set of music notes
and vocabulary words
is around here somewhere.
But before I could get it up, my
daughter asked me to put on
that Vince Guaraldi CD she loves for
music for her doll tea party.
The CD playing, I went back to pull out
the giant cardstock music notes but
was distracted by the mysterious sound
of a Christmas carol,
which turned out to be my son teaching
himself yet another song on the
keyboard in his room.
I finally got the bulletin board set
all pulled out and arranged, but I couldn't
find the kids. Turns out they were in
a tent they had made on one
of their beds, and my son was humming
the Nutcracker March and strumming along on the
guitar he made last week out of a
Rubbermaid container and some rubber bands, while
my daughter made her dollhouse dolls
dance ballet.
Hmm. Well, the music board is by the
dining table, we can talk about it over lunch.
Except that by the time I had lunch
ready, the kids had found some videos
on YouTube of people playing water
xylophones. So we sat in the living room with our
sandwiches, and water xylophone videos
let to harps, and bagpipes, and once they found the Animusic channel,
that was it. They were hooked for the afternoon.
Our day was gone, and the musical
bulletin board sat lonely and unused.
Maybe next time.
“We should sit down and do school
now,” I thought.
Is it Wednesday already? I must teach
them something important!
Language Arts is the core of all our
communication with the world.
Workbooks and pencils and a reading
text opened to today's excerpt were lined up
on the shelf in
eager anticipation of learning.
As I pulled books and arranged them on
the table, I listened to the game
my children were playing in the living
room. It was quite elaborate
with wizards and dragons, battles and
rescues.
Just as I was about to call them to the
table, they flopped down
on the couch, exhausted from their
game, and looked longingly
out the window at the rain pouring
down. “I wish we could go somewhere
today,” my son sighed. “Hey, maybe
the library!” his sister replied.
Well...a library run wouldn't hurt,
would it?
After a couple of hours at the library
and a quick lunch,
I was all ready to help them circle
nouns and put boxes
around verbs and copy out sentences
from their copywork book,
but my son was deep into one of his
books from the library,
and my daughter asked me to read
one of her new books with her, so....
I'm such a sucker for children's books.
When they finally tired of reading, my
son asked
to do Mad Libs so we did a few of
those,
and one of them talked about
grandmothers
(make that “the shiny grandmother
with a smelly unicorn on her hat”...Mad Libs, you know)
and so suddenly they wanted to write
out letters to Grandma....
Our day was gone, and the Language Arts
curriculum sat unopened on the table.
Maybe next time.
“We should sit down and do school
now,” I thought.
It's Thursday already, I'm feeling a
bit frantic.
Maybe Science will hold their interest.
I pulled out the Elementary Science
text
and checked the list of materials
needed.
But by the time I had gathered the
materials, the kids
had taken advantage of the spring
sunshine and gone out in the backyard.
My son had found his butterfly net and
was intent
on catching the butterflies that
appear in our garden each spring.
“Mom, is it time to plant our seeds
now?” my daughter asked,
and I sighed because, yes, indeed, it
was.
So she and I planted tomatoes and
peppers
in tiny pots on the picnic table, and
checked on the lettuces and carrots and
garlic
already growing in the garden beds,
and talked about how the warm spring
sunshine
would warm the seeds and help them
grow.
My son called us over to see the
butterfly he'd caught.
I explained to him that this was
'pieris rapae', the common white garden
butterfly,
and that it would lay it's eggs on our
brassicas –
broccoli and salad greens.
Well, the morning was getting on and
I knew the science project was waiting,
but when they asked
to search the garden for butterfly
eggs,
who was I to say no?
We had no luck finding eggs, partly
because,
being quite tiny, they're very hard to
find,
but mostly because we were distracted
by another find:
“Mom! Come here! Look at this
spider!” they called.
And there, building her web between
the stalks
of some high growing mint that lined
the fence,
was a stunning yellow garden spider –
argiope aurantia.
Well, the last of the morning
and the first of the afternoon
disappeared watching that beautiful
spider on her zigzagged web
and then searching the yard for more
critters
(plenty of worms, and roly-polies, and
ants, and bees, but no more spiders).
I brought a late lunch out
and we ate at the picnic table.
I cleared away the lunch dishes and
went in search of the kids –
would this science reading and project
ever get done?
But my son had pulled every rock
out of his collection box and was
showing them to his sister, pointing
out the different colors and markings
on each one,
and then somehow they got the idea
to use the rocks to prop up ramps
made of books
and race Hot Wheels cars down the ramps
to see which ramp
made the cars go fastest.
I left them to it.
Our day was gone, and the science
lesson materials sat unused on the table.
Maybe next time.
“We should sit down and do school
now,” I thought.
It's the end of the week and not one
lesson! What's something easy, just so
I can make sure we've done SOMETHING?
Art! That's easy, right?
But my daughter had beat me to the art
supply cabinet
and was already setting up
all her things to paint, and she'd
worked so hard I just
couldn't make her stop yet.
I went in search of her brother,
and found him in the floor in my room.
He had picked
up the book I'm reading on Norman
Rockwell
and was flipping through it,
examining the pictures.
I backed quietly out of the room.
“Mom! I painted you a picture!” my
daughter cried.
I went to examine her painting –
flowers and trees and butterflies.
“Because I know you like the garden,” she said,
beaming up at me with a smile.
My son came in to see her painting as
well,
with my book still tucked under his
arm.
“You know, they have some of Norman
Rockwell's
paintings on display at the local
museum,” I told him.
His eyes grew wide. “Really? Can we
go?”
So we loaded up and drove to the museum
to look at the paintings.
I really should do a lesson of some
kind, I thought,
as we munched french fries in the car
on the way home,
but the weather was so nice,
and as soon as they got out of the car,
the kids ran for the back yard
and pulled out their basket of chalk.
Before long, we had a magnificent giant
landscape of chalky colors spreading
across the patio.
I left them to it and went inside for
cold drinks.
As I stood in the kitchen, I heard the
back door open,
running footsteps, a pause, more
running,
the back door closing again.
I took the drinks outside. My daughter
was still working away
at her chalk masterpiece, but my son
was gone.
I called his name, panicked for a
moment,
but he called back right away,
“Over here, Mom!”
I followed the sound of his voice.
He had found a second beautiful garden
spider in a web
between the crepe myrtle in the corner
of the yard and the fence,
and was studying it carefully,
the clipboard of paper and a few
colored pencils
he must have run inside to fetch
on hand to sketch it.
For me, as it turns out.
Because he knows I like garden spiders.
Our day was gone, and not one lesson
provided.
Oh, well. Maybe next week.
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