Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Homework

Tuesday, March 10, 2009    2 comments

The dreaded day has arrived. Many years earlier than I expected it to come. My children came home from school yesterday with homework! HOMEWORK! It's due in a week. There are instructions and expectations! HOMEWORK!

Now, why am I freaking out? Because they're only 20 months and their greatest feat to date is to e-nun-ci-ate the phrase "a min-ute"? Can't read or write despite some weird expectations that an optopist had of Baby J, but that's a different story. Anyway. So, is it then because it's the beginning of the end? The rat race that I was so fearing?

Actually, nothing of that sort. The freak out comes from the fact it is not the kids that have to do the homework but the parents. I have homework? I didn't slave all those years in school to get given playschool homework. But like it or not, Packrat and I have homework. It's not a bad thing actually. We're supposed to, with our children create some aspect of a farm; they're doing farm animals in school. And in the spirit of environmental preservation, we're supposed to do that using scraps- so I'm thinking toilet rolls and old boxes. While doing this, we're supposed to photograph the effort and write a 50 word blurb on what our kids and us did.

Of course, Packrat, in a moment a little like the optopist, asked what and how the kids were supposed to write. When I pointed out that WE were supposed to do the writing, he very rightly pointed out that it wasn't the kids that had homework, it was us. We were the ones who were going to be compared with other parents and other projects. Our kids will be the mere accessories that accompanied the project.

In all fairness, we applaud the school for pushing us to spend more constructive time with our kids instead of standing still and letting run circles around us which we on occasion do when we're too tired to stop them; they eventually stop when they fall from all the dizzy spinning. We're just a bit cowed that 3 months into our kids' foray into school, the both of us are worried about homework.

School. Indeed.

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2 comments:

  1. tscd3/11/2009 10:54:00 AM

    Are they supposed to be able to write at 20 months?! That's a bit unfair. This better not be graded.

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  2. Ondine3/11/2009 01:24:00 PM

    They can scrawl pretty well. :)
    But no, we're supposed to be the ones doing the writing. And no, it's not graded. It's supposed to encourage parental involvement. This school's pretty big on that.

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