Saturday, February 24, 2007

A Little More

Yep...I'm on a roll tonight.

First, here's a picture of my unicorn. She was crawling around the den on a hand and both knees, and I just had to take a picture. Not great quality, again, because I took it with my camera phone, but I actually think it does really well considering I was indoors and it doesn't have a flash. It comes in really handy in those times when I want to take a picture but forget my camera...you never know what kind of shenanigans kids will pull unexpectedly.



I have to brag on my boy. As most of you (especially those of you with school-age kids or who are otherwise involved with schools) know, February is Black History Month. Both of my kids studied influential black Americans this month, especially Martin Luther King, Jr. J had a Social Studies project/report he had to do where he had to choose a Black American to research and write a report on him/her. So we did some research, and chose Bill Pickett. After he chose his subject, we sat here and researched him, and I had him take notes. Then I had him write his report based on the notes we took. I tried really hard as we were working on this to keep from crossing the line from helping him to putting words in his mouth. It's very important to me that my kids learn to do their homework on their own, and that it represents THEIR thoughts. A's really bad about bringing me her homework papers and asking me for the answers. I remind her that it's HER homeword, not mine, and that she has to learn to understand the questions and answer them herself. I'll help if she really has problems, but it frustrates me when she obviously doesn't even try, considering how incredibly smart she is.


Anyway, as I was going through the boy's papers today while cleaning up, I found his report, which had been graded by his teacher. He got an A+! I was so proud of him! I put his report on the refrigerator. His daddy was really proud too.


There is a funny story that goes along with that report, too. J got a book for Christmas that teaches him how to draw different types of motorcycles. He actually does really well, although he complains sometimes that it's "hard." We're trying to express to him that if he wants to learn to draw, he has to learn the fundamentals. His daddy's an artist, so I really want to cultivate this in him, because it's a talent he seems to have, and I totally didn't have it. Anyway, the hubby told J to give him the book after he was finished with it, and I guess he's drawing something from it. J goes in the kitchen and sees his Social Studies report on the refrigerator and comes in exclaiming that he got an A+ on it. I cracked up, because I had just told him about an hour or so before how proud I was of him for the work he'd done on it. He was using it as an excuse to sneak up behind the hubby to see what he was drawing. I told him to grab the report off the fridge and show it to Daddy, which he did, but is still looking for excuses to sneak up behind him. Too funny!


Curiosity really gets the best of my kids sometimes, and I KNOW they're not the only ones.


On a different note, I was looking back at my archives. I started blogging in May, and had exactly 100 entries in 2006. When I checked earlier this evening, I had 58 entries just this month. It may be 60 now. I guess I'm starting to get a bit more comfortable with this blogging thing, or at least realizing that maybe I really do have something to write about. Maybe somebody wants to read it, maybe not. But they're my thoughts, and I (or maybe even my kids) may want to go back and read them one day.


This is way better than any journal any English teacher wanted me to keep when I was in high school! It must be the technology thing.