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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
this turned out to mostly be about school
I'm staying up late tonight, hoping to make it until T gets up at three (yes, THREE. Thank you, boss-man.) to go to work, so that I can make him coffee and oatmeal (and maybe some bacon just for the wake-up scent value) for breakfast.
There were two parenthetical statements in that sentence. I do try to avoid that, usually. I'm too tired to mess with it now. As soon as I get done here -- I actually logged on to post Librivox updates, and got sidetracked -- I'm getting off the computer and doing some reading, where I know I can't a) damage anything or b) embarrass myself, no matter how tired I get.
Grammatical embarrassment just reminded me of my kids' favorite part of school this year: Fix-A-Sentence. In high school we did a thing called Daily Oral Language (not sure if this was a local teacher's invention or not; maybe everybody does this in high school; I don't know) where there would be a sentence, rife with errors, on the chalkboard, and we as a class would have a discussion wherein we repaired it and made it all proper and satisfying and correct. I think we had to write it down too but it's been a lot of years and plus it's 1:30 AM and I just don't remember. I should call Mr. Keller and ask him, right now, don't you think? I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Anyway. I have started doing this with my kids, and calling it Fix-A-Sentence or Sentence Doctors instead of DOL which is kind of a boring title, and besides, oral language involves a whole lot more than eliminating phrases like "very unique" (although I am certainly all for that), putting commas where they belong, and knowing where to put the hyphen in the phrase "fortieth-birthday party" (am obviously in favor of those, too. Oh, how I loved DOL).
Dang. Shut UP Rachel.
Anyway. The kids love this. They LOVE it. They would do it all day long if I let them. Especially if it got them out of doing math. Really, though, math is going well for them too. LT has some challenging stuff going on right now, but he's handling it. We're handling it, I should say, since I'm the one with the headache at the end of each lesson. History is actually turning out to be fun -- we're doing the history of the United States and right now we're just getting to Columbus' voyages. I didn't get a history book in time so I'm using a college US History book as a source text and coming up with my own curriculum for the two of them, which works fine for them and is a great refresher for me too. And we're doing science stuff and reading The Incredible Journey and the book of John and we're really having fun. Not that the kids (*cough*LT*cough*) would ever admit that.
Comments
You should totally call Mr. Keller. And like ask him what he's wearing or something. Well, seeing as it is now 2:45 in the afternoon, that wouldn't seem so bad. Except for asking him what he's wearing. And that, well, your married. And I don't think anyone wants to know what Mr. Keller is wearing.
Also, I think excelling in English really helped me overcome the fact that I was a dolt when it came to math.
What are you doing right now? (I almost typed, "What are you wearing right now?" LOL. I feel like chatting but I know I should go lay down and rest for a short bit while I have some time to myself.
Sorry if this comment is weird.
Posted by: Jenn at September 12, 2006 02:47 PM