Half-days, Sticky Notes, and Touching: A Public School Update

Warning: I may sound a bit snide, sarcastic, or cynical in this post. If that's not a departure from the norm, please don't tell me. :)

HALF-DAYS:  Perfect timing. A satisfaction survey from the public school system arrived today in the mail. It just so happens that today was a half-day. Why? Because of some parent-teacher conferences. Which is fine. Except... why today? This is the way it is done every year. We have a day off on Martin Luther King Day (which is fine by me), then they go to a full school day on Tuesday, and then we have this half day on Wednesday. Always in the same week as the Monday off. Hmmmm. Wouldn't it be great if we could have that half-day on the Friday before the Monday off? (I know what some of you will say--"But then the people who really need those mid-year conferences might not come because they could take that long weekend and go somewhere." Poppycock. Nobody's going anywhere. They just got back from Christmas Break.)

But I've gotten off track here. The real kicker about the half days is this: The schools are so crammed that my 2nd grader has lunch at 10:30 every day. But on the HALF days, he has lunch at 9:30. 9:30!! Seriously. They're being dismissed at 12noon--why are we feeding them lunch? So this morning he had breakfast, got his backpack together, got on the bus, went to school, and then...they read a book, followed by lunch. Crazy.

STICKY NOTES:  Does your child's school do this also? It's not so much an annoyance as a curiosity. Every once in a while, when there is some event (usually of the fund-raising type) coming up, Daniel comes home wearing a sticky note. Today's was a reminder of a fund-raising night at Chick-Fil-A. It just strikes me as funny that he is sometimes tranformed into this human bulletin board.

TOUCHING:  Although I opted my child out of all the "Family Life" objectives for this year (you know, that's when the school makes a somewhat pathetic attempt at doing the family's job of teaching proper behavior and morals to our children), so...although, I signed him out of these, they failed to take him out and he recently was taught about "good touches and bad touches." You may be thinking--harmless enough--but I disagree. When I asked him to sum up what he had learned, he told me that if a touch feels good, then it's a good touch, and if it feels bad it's a bad touch.

WHAT?!?

This is WHY I opted him out of these so that we could cover these topics at home. I'm glad I asked for a summary or I might not have known how he interpreted the information he received.

So I filled out that little pink survey and it is ready to be mailed tomorrow. I have to wonder, though, if my completed surveys end up in some discard pile because I sound like I'm frustrated enough to reach out and "touch" someone.

In Memoriam

Few things say, "It's going to be a great day!" like 12 dead tadpoles. Yes, that's right, we are officially down to 45 amphibians to raise. The price for all this glee is a few sad children. But I can live with that. I've tried to reassure them that it's not their fault and that tadpoles often don't live to adult froghood, while inwardly I'm celebrating and hoping soon to reclaim my tadpole-free life. I've grown weary of having containers of pond water on my kitchen island.

Our owl pellet lab went well. Once they got over the smell, the kids loved discovering all the tiny bones hidden in their pellets and then trying to identify the skulls. We were also able to clear up a few misunderstandings about owls. Some of the kids figured that since owls regurgitate these pellets, they must not have a "back door" for other waste products. Not so. They have a dual exhaust system.

Next Tuesday we will be dissecting earthworms. I wonder what extra rules I will have to create while we are using scalpels...

So this post is dedicated in loving memory to the creatures who, by being dead, allow us to have interesting science labs.

Last note. While writing this, I have been informed that we are now down to 44 tadpoles. So sad.

Hardy Little Devils

Zero down, 57 to go. Yep, they're ALL still alive. And I continue to waffle between stress over tadpoles not looking healthy and stress over none having died yet. Yesterday, we made an emergency pond water run because the pond water tadpoles looked listless (from what we could see of them through the murky water, which was the other indication we needed to take a trip to the creek).

We had our lab group on Tuesday and the kids were, of course, very excited to take home their little tadpole habitat. And we are happy to only have 3 habitats left in our care for now.

The lab went well and the kids are great. I introduced our "Lab Rules," of which there are were four. Simple, straightforward rules like--raise your hand, and follow instructions. After the first 5 minutes of lab, it was obvious I needed to add another rule: No pocketknives. I didn't see that one coming.

57 New Pets

I got these in the mail today. We now have 57 tadpoles. Hopefully I will not be writing in November about the 57 frogs we own. I ordered these for our first experiment in our Science Lab Group that I am running for homeschoolers this year. So when I say "pets", I really mean experimental lab animals. Mwaa-ha-ha-ha! Evil scientist laugh.

57 tadpoles. Aaaaacchhh! What was I thinking?! I hope I'm not in over my head.

I want Nathan to have the "classroom" experience again, even though he has school at home. This is the biggest reason behind my decision to teach a science lab to TWELVE kids. Yes, TWELVE! (Unrelated--have you ever noticed how, sometimes, when you type a word in all caps or type it a bunch of times, it no longer looks right to you? Twelve. Hmmm...is that how it's spelled?)

I wanted to start things off with a bang by doing a live specimen study. I hope it isn't a bang followed by a fizzle. But if these little guys don't survive until Tuesday 11:30am, this experiment will definitely be a fizzle. Tuesday is our lab, and we will be running an experiment over 6-10 weeks to test which type of water is the best growing environment for these tadpoles--spring, pond, or distilled.

On the one hand, I don't want the tadpoles to die, but I also don't want them ALL to make it to adulthood. Especially not the ones we personally are keeping. Alright. That's the intro. I'll be writing again soon. Let the obituaries begin.

Private "I"

My one-room schoolhouse

Following week one of home schooling, I am in serious need of some alone time. It doesn't have to be in large chunks, but I could really use a bit of private time, alone, to myself, for just me, with no one else, for maybe 45 minutes every afternoon. That would be bliss. People are here. All the time. And they talk. All the time. I love these people, but...I really do need some private time.

During the course of this first week, I've been able to ferret out some other secrets that may help me be successful this year. Here's what I've learned:

• We need a box of kleenex in the school room (not that there's a LOT of crying).


• We need a garbage can in the school room (for all the used kleenexes).


• We probably should have a clock in there somewhere.


• I need to start interviewing possible substitute teachers so I can have my life back once in awhile.


• I will just have to turn a blind eye to Stephanie's consumption of large quantities of cheetos, oreos, juice boxes, and gumballs, since they are extremely useful in occupying her attention.

Actually, things have gone very well this week and I still feel very positive about doing home school. Yes, there has been a teensy bit of crying, quite a lot of kleenex use (for drippy noses), and an unprecedented amount of cheetos in the dining room, but I'm learning to cope.

Into the Unknown

Today, I jump with both feet, and definitely both eyes wide open, into a great unknown. I will send my middle child off on the bus to a new school and then I will greet my oldest child in the dining room, where I will be his teacher, while simultaneously entertaining my youngest, who is two. Was that a run-on sentence? Oh no! Maybe I can't really do this.

The job of mother gets more interesting and more demanding with each passing year. While home schooling is a choice (that I do not have to make), it is really no different than the choices we are all making as mothers every day--to do whatever we feel is best for our children regardless of the personal cost.

Wish me luck. Here goes!