Kid stories

Removing the grass one swing at a time. 

I love walking places with the kids.  We have a chance to notice things.  Lots of things.  Like street signs and grass and the incredible numbers of butterflies we had around here the other day and house numbers and what is in that trash can and cars and such.  

Yesterday, while walking to the local youth educational institution to retrieve Sonar X5, Sonar X3 and I were waiting to cross the street.  Halfway across, the red hand on the crosswalk signal started flashing.  Sonar X3 pointed to the sign and said, knowingly, “the flashing red hand means don’t dilly-dally.”  So true.  

***

Settling the kiddos down to bed the other night, I was stretched out on Sonar X5’s bed, and he curled up next to me.  I rolled and curled around him and told him we were spoons stacked together.  He stuck out his legs and stretched his arms straight down and told me he was more like a fork.  

***

Sonar X8 isn’t thrilled about the mountain of homework he has to do every night (frankly, I’m not either, but that’s another story).  Most times he does the work without much prompting, but sometimes it’s like pulling teeth.  Today was one of those days where he went off and started working quietly, but clearly he was not immune to distraction.  A row of five, single- and double-digit addition and subtraction problems were printed in one corner of the math worksheet.  After correctly answering each of the problems, he drew plus signs between the answers and wrote their total in the right-hand margin (also correct).  Then he decorated the ends of each—hm, what is the line called when operations are written vertically?  Horizontally it would be the equal-sign, but vertically, while it means the same thing, it must have a different name?  At any rate, he decorated their ends with little curlicues.  

Comments

[Astraea]

Curliques = owning the homework. I think that's Sonar X8's way of silently shouting,

"You got SERVED!"

;) Or at least, I like to think so.

[drythe]

Mounds of homework for 8-year-olds do seem positively ridiculous. Agent 007's teacher gives them three units of math at a shot and says, "It's due in two months"! No night-by-night or week-by-week assignments for this woman, which makes it all the harder to explain to Agent 007 why, when it's not due for two months, he needs to do A PAGE of math homework tonight. And forget trying to match the topic of the homework to whatever the hell they did in class that day. "Just do some math" is what I end up saying.

Sonar X8 has it right. More curlicues are needed. And more places in the margins where he adds the sums of all the problems, as though to say, "For God's sake, are we *done* here?"