Terra Nova Tears

My 7 year old is about to take his Terra Nova exam. He is in 1st grade and, as you probably know, this is the requisite standardized tests for first grade. We were discussing it in the car on the way home from school this afternoon. To ease his apparent anxiety, I told him not to worry about it because I would love him just the same if he got all the answers right or if he got them all wrong. He seemed surprised by this and asked me why he had to take the test at all if that was the case. I tried to explain to him that the test was really to make sure that the teacher was doing her job - that the State was testing the teacher. He looked at me in all his innocence and asked "Then why doesn't my teacher take the test tomorrow then mummy?" It's certainly worth considering...

Idiot Words and Fruit Loops!

Recently, my youngest invented a game that's probably been invented at kitchen tables across the country since breakfast cereal was born way back when... We had more fun playing (and eating) this game than we've had in years, and trust me, we've had plenty of fun! The goal was to make words with "oo" in them and use the cereal in place of the "oo" but we just kept eating them!! Eventually we had a list:

We did, however, encounter some problems along the way:

In our house we call them "idiot words" because they don't spell the way they sound. We say that some idiot who invented the English language couldn't spell very well so some of the words are spelled incorrectly...

Timing Is Everything....

So there I was at the ballpark with my 7 year old, for practice, and it wasn't even close to 6pm yet. We were uncharacteristically early but I had that uneasy feeling as no one looked so familiar...

I tried to make the adults at the far end of the field look like our team coach but I couldn't squeeze any of them into my vague recollection. There was a smattering of children practicing but they were just far enough away that my 45 year old eyes couldn't quite make them out.

As we trudged across the park my son informed me that one group were girls and he most certainly did not have them on his team. The other children on the field just kept growing as we approached them until I could no longer convince myself that they were just rather tall, very overweight 7 year olds. Finally I conceded that they were indeed around 10 or 11 years old and clearly not my son's team, so we wandered back to the car to wait, in hope, for some familiar strangers who were now our teammates for the season.

Hope began to fade as carload after carload of unfamiliar faces piled onto the field. I tried to visualize the team list that was posted on my bulletin board but to no avail.

You'd think I'd know better, this being my third child 'n all. It's always something - wrong time, wrong baseball park, wrong child... Why do they have to have so many variables? Why can't they practice in the same park, on the same day, at the same time each week?

Then the inevitable happened; just as we got to the right park, with the right team at close to the right time, it began to rain...

You Can Lead A Horse To Water....

When children have a need to communicate, they find a way to accomplish their goal:

The same is true of reading. Create a need to read and you'll generate that intrinsic motivation that serves as a driving force for success...

The Tooth Fairy Didn't Show Up...

What kind of a tooth fairy doesn't show up?
This poor sad son of mine was broken hearted.
Here he is on his way to school, feeling neglected, nay abandoned by the tooth fairy...
Was the tooth fairy too busy with other children?
Was she too focused on her work to notice the cries of an innocent 7 year old?

His mother told him that there was thunder and lightening last night and that the tooth fairy doesn't travel during inclement weather. On noticing his skepticism, she added that the lightening bolts could damage the fairy's delicate wings...

What if he tells his friends at school or worse yet, what if he never believes me again...

You are welcome to post any issue or question here:

Are you frustrated with the way that your child is behaving? Is school becoming a problem?

Would you like to discuss discipline issues, cell phones, video games or your children's friends?

I Don't Mean To Seem Ungrateful but....

My 7 year old brought home a note from school - he needed $5 for a mother's day gift. Nought for nothing but should I really have to pay for my own gift? What happened to recycled gifts made from discarded toilet roll tubes and washed out yogurt pots?

Worse yet, how much of his creativity and artistic ability are really in this present? I don't mean to seem ungrateful but I prefer anything that my son thought of by himself. I love paintings that he creates even if I have no idea what they are really meant to be and I love the good old fashioned potrait for Mother's day that looks nothing like a human never mind me. I dont mean to seem ungrateful but...