Homework

For once I have tons to write about but just haven't had time lately. I'll try to catch up this week.

Josh did well in his first week of school and already has had homework. Which means *I* already have had homework. His first assignment was to write his name out on two full sheets of paper.

Twenty-four times.

In cursive.

Yes, cursive.

I should stop here and explain that when we first interviewed for this school we were told that the youngest students were taught cursive rather than print. They feel that cursive is easier to learn, helps kids read faster, helps them to have better handwriting in the long run, yada yada yada. They also mentioned something about how at this age kids catch on to cursive very quickly then can be taught print quickly, whereas kids who write only in print for the first two years of school end up struggling when it comes time to learn cursive.

Our response was basically an "okay, fine." We like the school because the academics are spot on, and the entire curriculum is Christ-centered. Josh already knows how to write (print) pretty well and he's also reading okay, so I had no problem with them teaching him cursive too. I guess I still have vague ideas of having him practice print at home in case we switch him to public school next year.

So on Friday afternoon he comes home with this note from the teacher asking that we have him write his name on these sheets, and adding that it was permissable for us to guide him since "this will be new for many of our Kindergarten students." No freaking kidding!!!! The child hasn't written a single letter of cursive in his life!

So, we begin. I do a lot of "permissive" guiding, and he gets more than a little frustrated. The baby starts to fuss, so I delegate homework duty over to Jay and head upstairs with Daniel for a nap. 15 minutes later, I check on the two downstairs and discover that one is very grouchy and the other one is crying -- draw your own conclusions which was which! Sometimes their biggest problem is that their personalities are too much alike. We sent Josh on a break, then I informed my husband in no uncertain terms that he needed to suck it up and keep helping with homework because there was no way I was going to be the only one helping for the next 17 years of school. Let's nip that in the bud. Nipped.

Jay found my declaration hysterically funny. He also had a few smart-mouth comments about how since we were paying so much tuition the kids should do all their work at school. Some of you may remember that Jay himself did, indeed, do all his homework in school. Usually right before class, finishing just as the bell was ringing. I remember him one time randomly filling in the last 6 or 7 answers on a multiple choice take-home quiz. He guessed right on two of them and had pretty much everything else on the quiz correct so he pulled off a B+, the punk. We found that all of that funny too!

Anyway, back to work. It really was dragging, and never has our last name looked so long. Then something weird happened. He started doing it himself! Sure, he gets hung up on a several of the letters and he still stopped and asked for help every two minutes, but at least he's doing it. I was really floored. And he was so proud of himself when he looked back at the completed pages.

So I guess his teacher knows what she's doing, and practice makes perfect. But if we had this many problems with the first week of kindergarten, can you imagine when word problems, algebraic equations, and tangents start popping up? We'll probably be okay -- Jay and I are both much better at math than we are at cursive.