Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Awards, a Project, and a Traffic Jam

A Traffic Jam
Yesterday was a very busy day. It began with Bright Futures, and since Mark was home, I decided to leave the kids at home. As I sat in traffic for two hours, a few questions surfaced:
How do people do this everyday?

Why am I the only mini-van out here. Don't moms work for a living anymore?

Why didn't I bring my kids so I could cruise down the HOV lane?

How do people do this everyday?

What is the name of that movie with Michael Douglas where he gets so fed up with the traffic he just starts shooting?

Why didn't I bring my kids so I could cruise down the HOV lane?

A Project
I rushed home after BFA, gulped down a fast food lunch, loaded up the kids, and we headed to our last official co-op day of the year.

It was a fun day, but we still had the end-of-the-year celebration to come as well as the Geography Fair. While at co-op, I noticed some of the kids had already brought in their Geography Fair projects, and they were pretty grandiose. Since I hadn't pushed Alex to put a ton of effort into her project on deltas, I wanted Alex to add a few finishing touches on her project on deltas, so after co-op we rushed to Office Max, purchased a report display board, and basically started from scratch printed out a couple of things, glued a few papers, and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when we were done.

Our Her project turned out pretty well.

Not bad for 45 minutes work.

Let's see...what lessons did I teach my child through this project?
1) It pays to procrastinate.
2) Sometimes you have to compare yourself to others to get motivated to do well.
3) Mom enjoys doing projects.

OK, so I won't be writing a parenting or homeschooling book anytime soon.

Awards
At the end-of-the-year awards ceremony for co-op, the kids always receive certificates of completion. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I requested that mine say something along the lines of, Congratulations, you've passed the [number(th)] grade seeing as how we still have 55 school days to go, but anyway.

Some of the boys sat all together but, surprisingly, caused no trouble at all. What is funny is that Jacob began the evening with us. Then at one point we noticed he was gone--he had snuck over to sit with his friends. He sure has come a long way from the timid little guy he was a year or so ago!

After the ceremony, the kids all got to show off different projects they have worked on throughout the semester. Alex had made three bas relief clay pieces that were on display from her geography class. She also had a scrapbook to show off, but we forgot to bring it back for the ceremony.

Jacob showed off his Literature Pockets, which were all about Caldecott winners. Michael was also in this class.

Michael tried his best not to be a part of showing off his nutrition abacus, a class both boys were also in.


And Audrey showed Michael and her daddy her lapbook about the Five Senses.




Next and last for co-op for the 2009-2010 year: Field Day!

7 comments:

CrossView said...

I've been contemplating going back to work - just part-time. And the drive and traffic are what I dread the most when I'm contemplating.

And #'s 1 and 2 on the lessons will get you through life. ;o)

My 13-yr old has really come out of her "shell", too. It made me both ahppy and sad to watch. *sniff*

Good job on all the projects!

Amy said...

I thought kids didn't count in the HOVE lane anyway...only adults. Am I wrong?

LoriM said...

We have a friend whose son claims he got a C on a birdhouse his dad helped him make. It wasn't very good and the teacher told him the only reason he got a C instead of an F was because it was "obvious he hadn't had any help from his parents with it." Apparently he told his dad about the project about 9pm the night before it was due.

On a sad note - the dad, our good friend, passed away earlier this month - at age 59. At the funeral, they decided not to tell a lot of stories (instead giving praise to God for Don's life) but the son said he had to tell this one and repeat once more, what he always said when he told the story - "Thanks for the C, Dad!" :-)

Kathleen said...

Amy ~ Kids are people too! :-)

Michelle said...

I think I'm the queen of either procrastination or don't even accomplish what I told them to do. Although, I have much improved this year! I also dread traffic!! ugh! If you think its bad here, you should see it in Japan!

dclouser said...

School is over for many at the end of March?? That seems awfully early, but the great thing about home schooling is that you can work it the way you want. Looks like the kids did a lot of fun things at coop this year! I guess this means that your last 55 days of school there will be no coop?

@nnie said...

love the honesty about the project... sooooo true!!! :-)