Sesame Street: Dads in Prison

"P is for Prison," quips Info Wars.  Sesame Street now has a character whose dad is in jail.  Do YOU want your three-year-old learning about gang-banging baby daddies and the word "incarceration?"

I was all ready to slam this as an obvious normalisation of thuggery until I perused the videos at the PBS website.  Sure, they're a little syrupy and gloss over the "adult rules" the parents broke to get stuck in the pokey entirely.  But the clips deal with helping preschoolers sort out their feelings, and are not meant to be taken as treatises on the faulty self-actualisation of today's American parent.

To my understanding, these videos are not meant for the regular Sesame Street audience.  And if that's the case, I don't see why people shouldn't be applauding their efforts to help these little children and their families.  Children can't help what their parents have done, and kids with that kind of heartache deserve all the help we can give them.

Social Studies Curriculum

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because it's easier to get criticism from a computer than a person.  Imagine your spell-checker grew a brain and pointed out problem areas in your writing.  That's Grammarly. 

Nothing can replace a trained copy editor, but if I were learning the language or had trouble writing, it's definitely something I'd spend the money on for our homeschool.   Take a look at the comments after a news story sometime.  Spell a word wrong, and people focus on that instead of  the perfectly reasoned argument you just wrote.  Unfortunate but true.

So here's what we're using for social studies next school year:  Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World Volume 3:  Early Modern Times.  Emperor has already done Volumes 1 and 2.  The first volume begins in ancient times and is written more simply.  Each volume becomes more detailed and is written for a more advanced student.  Emperor will be a sixth grader next year, and I think this is written at a level that he can read, digest and understand.

Sometimes single questions take up an entire page of the test booklet.  I'd rather write those in and save paper and ink.

I got the Test and Answer Key with it, and I also bought the Activity Book.  Neither one of those purchases were necessary, really, if I were pinching pennies.  But they are very nice to have.  The tests are a fair review of each chapter.  I don't use them as tests but worksheets to review each chapter.  The Activity Book could easily provide the backbone of an entire year's worth of reading, art and science curriculum.  There are so many things to do it is genuinely impossible for every family to do them all.  So I take it as an idea book, filled with reproduceable drawings, patterns, maps and the like.

The Activity Book is not needed, but I feel it adds some depth to a child's studies.

Hello!

I told Woodjie that a present was coming in the mail for him.  In a box.  And it is something he could use every day!  He guessed a puppy.  He loves his new Apollo style Polish pottery plate.  These things are very, very heavy.  They last almost forever, too.  This is Woodjie's very own.

Another view.

D was trimming a bush in our front yard today and he began to hear cheeping.  Can you see the baby cardinals inside the nest?  They are the children of the birds that keep pooping on our cars!  But D didn't have the heart to kill them.  Their eyes aren't even open yet.

G did some yard work with me today as well.  I weeded this area out and G planted the little red Knockout Rose near the mailbox.  Do you see how nicely the pink one I bought has grown over the years?

Tired of All the Screaming and Crying

Me too, Rose.  Me, too.  Someone had a long day.  Can you fall asleep like this?

The Contents of My Fridge

Bag of lettuce.  Three carrots.  Mega margarine.  Bacon package.  Four mustards.  Five soft tortilla wraps.  Cheese.  Orange juice.  I think I'm doing a great job on project "Let's Eat Everything in the Fridge and Freezer Before We Buy More Stuff."  But the sailors are starting to mutiny and D has abandoned ship for the local Wal-Mart.  He's going to battle the Memorial Day crowds because he just can't take it any more.  By the way, whoever thought of replacing old-style metal racks in fridges with these clear plastic monstrosities that need constant cleaning should have to walk the plank.

Family Happenings

G graduated from (City Name) North High School last weekend.  Here's a pic I snapped before we went in for the ceremony.

Here he is on line waiting to get his diploma.  I don't have a picture of him actually receiving his diploma because JUST as his name was being called, a large group directly in front of me STOOD UP.  I cannot tell you how mad and disappointed I was to miss my child graduating because someone else was in a hurry to get to the parking lot first. 

Elf and Emperor keep riding bikes that are wayyy too small for them because they never quite learnt to do it the proper way on a larger bike.

See?  They had lots of fun trying, though.

Woodjie loves playing outside!

Flower in my front yard.

Salamigate 2013

Exhibit A.

I'm already crabby and grumpy because no one listens to me.  If only everyone did everything exactly as I said, nothing bad would ever happen.  But nooo.  Tragedy upon tragedy had to happen in my home this morning, because the routine is slightly off-kilter.

Which means I'm off-kilter, really.  The people who live with me will tell you it doesn't take much.

Elf opened the fridge and an entire package of salami somehow fell out, flipped upside-down, opened, and spilled all over the floor. 

It was tragic!  That was D's salami.  He had juuust bought it at Sam's Club.  Sam's Club is 20 minutes away, so that's like a whole hour's worth of work right there when you consider the shopping that has to be done.

So I'm annoyed.  I tell Elf to pick up the salami, put the dirty parts in the trash and save the clean stuff.

And he goes and throws the whole package away!  He made sure to mix all the salami up during the clean-up process, too.

I tried explaining to him that you only throw away the parts that actually touched the ground, not the clean stuff that is on top of the dirty stuff.  I'm even getting little papers out and demonstrating the process on my kitchen counter with an annoyed tone.  Elf is explaining that everything is touching everything so it all gets chucked.

I'm so mad.  I made him call his dad at work to explain what happened because I sure wasn't gonna be the fall guy for all this.  And I was all miffed about this and some other stuff and Patrick just tells Elf, "She just needs something to be mad about right now."

Goody!  I've sure found something now!  Now I'm all mad at Patrick.  Lots of bickering ensues.

Have you had one of those mornings recently?

I haven't been feeling well and Emperor kindly reviewed all my symptoms and came up with "influenza."  He said this was "quite likely, as you display at least one respiratory symptom and one constitutional symptom."

Yeah, my freedom of speech thing has been in full force lately, but I'm not saying anything because that's been getting me into trouble.

"How long has this been going on?" he wondered.  I told him about two weeks.

"It's not influenza, then," he said.  "Given that you have had some cold symptoms earlier, it still could be, but it's unlikely."

Patrick tells me my symptoms indicate "lack of good sleep," and that I might go try that sometime and see if my life improves.  Brilliant.