February 26, 2003

• Snips and Tickles

  
  

  Life on the hill can sometimes be ... well ... hillish.  The "lane" leading up to our little cul-de-sac, off which our driveway meanders, is a private road.  Therefore, it isn't the responsibility of the county to plow, sand or otherwise do anything to maintain it.  Whenever we have snow or ice, we just have to deal as best we can until it melts. 

  
  

  This morning Tim started down the hill, and went into a long uncontrolled slide.  (I have no idea the grade of our hill, but if you think of the steepest road in your town, you can't be far off.)  Now his car is stuck in the ditch about halfway down to the main road.  How did he get to work?  He walked back up to the house, and took my van.  It's a good thing.  That poor neglected vehicle hasn't been driven in so long that the gas in it cost about 20¢ a gallon less than the stuff being sold today.  

  
  

  Tim is really wishing for the snow to melt so the kids and I can get out of the house.  In the past week I've completely cleaned out and rearranged the pantry, the schoolroom, our bedroom, and the den.  I was eyeing the master closet last night when he got that panicked look.  Before I could say modular arrangement, he had me seated in front of the computer with a new puzzle type game he just happened to find and download.  It's a good game.  Little blocks that can be controlled, organized and managed through careful decision-making.  Kind of like the modules I picture for our closet. 

  
  

  

  
  

  School today has been interesting.  I've talked often and at lenght about the fact that I'm homeschooling my children.  Have I ever talked about why I do it?  My oldest son, Michael, is a learns differently kind of kid.  At the instigation of his pediatrician, he was first tested for neurological disorder when he was three and hadn't yet spoken a word.  Through the years we've gotten various results and reports from different testing agencies depending on what they were focused on.  The easiest way to describe the difficulty Michael has is that he processes information differently than other people. 

  
  

  It shows up in his language and syntax.  For instance, he has been working on a critical thinking curriculum.  These are exercises in simple analysis.  Describe the shape, reproduce the shape, find the differences between the shapes - this kind of thing.  When I checked his most recently complete assignment he had written this sentence, "That trapezoid is a minus 2."  That made perfect sense to him.  The figure in question was a five sided figure, triangle over rectangle, like a child might draw to represent a house.  Most days we rock along pretty well, but then we hit something like that and we just sit and look at each other.  We have no common syntax for him to help me understand what that meant to him, and I don't have any way to explain to him why his answer isn't correct.  After I stared at the figure for about five minutes it occurred to me that two additional lines drawn from the bottom of the rectangle would turn the figure into a trapezoid.  Is that what he had in mind?  He doesn't know. 

  
  

  Tucker is into drawing animals these days.  Some of them even look kind of like the animal he has in mind.  But, he doesn't just draw the animal, he draws a second figure inside it to show the last thing that animal ate.   The pig ate Mickey Mouse, the cow ate someone's hand, and the turkey ate a car.  All animals are immediately read their rights, "You have the right to an opportunity" and imprisoned on the refrigerator for "illegal snacking."  Tucker is still mad because there has been no "Kessert" after dinner for the past two nights.  He raided the candy supply on Monday and ate an entire bag of wildberry skittles while I was vacuuming.  After I scraped him off the ceiling, I explained that he'd had his sugar quota for the week.  He tried to negotiate with me, suggesting that he had been "under" on sugar the week before and was just making up.  But, since I'm the unreasonable bane of his existence, he was unsuccessful in his argument.  This morning he cam out of his bedroom with one lint covered skittle that he'd apparently overlooked on Monday.  "I am a lucky kid!" he announced before he popped it into his mouth.  I'm thinking of extending the "no kessert zone" into next week just for spite.

  • 10:51 am
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