Tuesday
Dec092008
Golden White Board
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 06:00PM
Kate has a lot of homework this year. That means that the managing, planning, writing, scheduling, ciphering and cajoling that I do at the office doesn't end when I walk in the front door at home.
There's often a battle raging inside my head while I'm battling with Kate outside my head. Do I try to constantly keep reminding her to get this stuff done? Do I give up dinner making/laundry doing/clutter pick-upping/soccer-practice driving in order to sit down and help her through every minute of it? Do I let her "forget" or just decide that she'd rather do something else and suffer the consequences?
And while I'm sitting there watching her work on her times tables and sentence structure, I can't help but think, "Hey, I already did this stuff. I paid my dues." (Of course, I didn't have that quantity of homework till I was in at least the ninth grade.)
Of course, none of that type of thinking is productive. And for her part, Kate is really working hard at it. But through this turbulent first semester of third grade, I've managed to learn and discover some new techniques to help us both get through it with minimal glasses of wine (on my part) and fewer eyeball rolls and hands-to-the-sky gestures.
Tip Number One: Let the girl relax for a minute. Go kick the ball, dance to some horrible Jonas Brothers song, have a quick tennis match on the Wii.
Tip Number Two: Feed her. She's going to lap my diminutive stature in a matter of one good growth spurt, and she's feeding that growing body like each meal is her last. A snack will keep her brain on her homophones instead of her hunger.
Tip Number Three: Give her a dry-erase board. This is quite possibly the best little brainstorm I've had since the "truth bed" (the end-of-day kid-confessional) and naming vegetables after icky monster parts. She sketches out her weekly plan, carefully erasing each day as she completes the tasks that she sets for herself based on the week's due dates. The drawback is that Kate likes to linger in the creativity of the task (yesterday, she painstakingly made each letter a different color), but she got the work done. Which is kind of our goal here.
So there you go. And by all means, please leave comments with your suggestions for homework help!
There's often a battle raging inside my head while I'm battling with Kate outside my head. Do I try to constantly keep reminding her to get this stuff done? Do I give up dinner making/laundry doing/clutter pick-upping/soccer-practice driving in order to sit down and help her through every minute of it? Do I let her "forget" or just decide that she'd rather do something else and suffer the consequences?
And while I'm sitting there watching her work on her times tables and sentence structure, I can't help but think, "Hey, I already did this stuff. I paid my dues." (Of course, I didn't have that quantity of homework till I was in at least the ninth grade.)
Of course, none of that type of thinking is productive. And for her part, Kate is really working hard at it. But through this turbulent first semester of third grade, I've managed to learn and discover some new techniques to help us both get through it with minimal glasses of wine (on my part) and fewer eyeball rolls and hands-to-the-sky gestures.
Tip Number One: Let the girl relax for a minute. Go kick the ball, dance to some horrible Jonas Brothers song, have a quick tennis match on the Wii.
Tip Number Two: Feed her. She's going to lap my diminutive stature in a matter of one good growth spurt, and she's feeding that growing body like each meal is her last. A snack will keep her brain on her homophones instead of her hunger.
Tip Number Three: Give her a dry-erase board. This is quite possibly the best little brainstorm I've had since the "truth bed" (the end-of-day kid-confessional) and naming vegetables after icky monster parts. She sketches out her weekly plan, carefully erasing each day as she completes the tasks that she sets for herself based on the week's due dates. The drawback is that Kate likes to linger in the creativity of the task (yesterday, she painstakingly made each letter a different color), but she got the work done. Which is kind of our goal here.
So there you go. And by all means, please leave comments with your suggestions for homework help!
Reader Comments