home work

Last winter I bought Jordan and Tennyson each a Brain Quest workbook. The workbooks are great - they are chalked full of curriculum based activities for kids. Jordan's follows the Kindergarten curriculum, and Tennyson's is for preschool aged kids, but is essentially a slightly simpler version of Jordan's.

We call the books our homework, and the kids beg to do them. They love them. They'd sit and do homework at the dining room table for hours a day if I had hours a day to sit and work with them. I insist that they wait for me to do them as I want to make sure that they're understanding the material and learning something as they work their way through the books. I actually slacked with it a bit this winter, but we've done it a couple of times in the last week so we're definitely upping our educational game.

I love watching them sit there and carefully write out their letters. Jordan has been doing this stuff all year at kindergarten, so she's pretty adept at it, while Tennyson takes a little longer to get his letters just right. He's so proud of himself, especially when I tell him he's finally done something perfectly.

And he does - because I've begun erasing imperfect letters and having him try again until he gets it right. He's not offended. He's thrilled when he gets praised and I stick a sticker on a page letting him know that he's done.

The books go up to grade 4. I imagine that past grade 4 they won't be half as excited to sit and do homework with me over the summer holidays. Until then I'll keep buying them for them.

I'm also guessing that in a few years Jordan won't cry because she misses school. On the last day of school I picked her up, only to have her burst into tears at the school door. She didn't want it to be summer, she didn't want a new teacher, she didn't want to miss her friends.

She's so sweet. It must be one of the perks of being an early years teacher - the kids actually adore you. I'm sure Jordan will miss her teachers each spring until she has a chance to get to know her new teacher in the fall. Last year it was the same upon leaving nursery school. She was pretty upset to say goodbye to her adored Panee Carpenter.

On another note, the other day Tennyson told me that he's not going to move to China. He threatens to move to China when he's a grownup on the days that he's mad at me for something. Why? Because he figures it's as far away as he can go. Yup. Nice.

The other day though, he said "Mommy, I'm not going to move to China. I'm not going to move away when I'm a grownup, I'm going to stay here with you." Then, with the utmost sincerity, he asks "When I'm a grownup, can you tell me that I said that? Can you tell me that when I was a little kid I said I was going to live here forever? Can you remind me I said that?" I promised that yes, I'd remind him that he was planning on staying here forever. We all know that he can't break his promise, right?

:)