Lately I feel moderately to severely sleep deprived. This
could be for a number of reasons, most obvious being the twins, They really are
a lot of work, but they're adorable, babies, and don't know any better so I
won't pin it on them. There's work.
That's always exhausting, but it's necessary and everybody works, so I've got
no excuse there. Then there's the
illustration. I finally got a legitimate illustrating gig, and they signed me
for 4 books. I was ecstatic, but a little overwhelmed when I found out that
they want them all completed in about 5-6 months (yikes!) But I remind myself
that I brought that on myself. It's what I've been working towards so I can't
blame that either. I could blame it on all the time I spend reading to the
orphans at the orphanage, but that would be a lie so I won't say that. The only
thing I can think left to blame is my kids homework.
I don't know when the great shift took place
in schooling to require 2 hours of homework from elementary aged school kids
happened. My memory may be foggy , but I seem to remember doing my school work
at school. The other night we had Kade(kindergarten)
working on his reading, sight words, sounds of the letters song, and an art
project.
Kalli (3rd grade) working on her reading, math worksheet, spelling
list, and reading comprehension sheet. That is the same list of home work she has every night, and her math homework is ridiculous. She had a story problem that sounded like 5 exchange students had played the telephone game and wrote down what they thought they had heard. I re-read it 5 times before I got what it was trying to ask. In a nutshell, it was telling you that there was an average price of something, and that one boy had bought a dozen of that item, and another girl estimated that he spent x amount on it, so to answer it you were simply supposed to say whether the girls estimate was correct or not. Yeah that's pretty simple for a third grader.
and Lindsay
(6th grade) doing her 5 page report on Egypt, along with accompanying visual display, while asking me questions about
imaginary numbers in math ( I never made it past Algebra 2 so I'm no help).
I
mean no disrespect towards any teachers, I know homework is necessary, and I'm
sure there is a study somewhere out there that says this amount of homework is
necessary if you want to keep your kid off drugs, and I'm sure that study was
conducted by somebody who didn't have homework when they were in elementary
school. And I'm also sure that any English teacher who happens to read this
will vomit at my gross misuse of grammar and punctuation.
I guess if we had only one child it would be no big deal, but we have 3, and 3 kids x 2 hrs. of homework a night equals 6 hrs. of homework a night which is too much. And I know I got that problem right because Jackie checked my work, and I used a calculator.
