Dylan manages to make 30 minutes of homework stretch into an hour. He will purposely write his answers illegibly, so that I have to tell him to erase them and write them again. He'll write the wrong answers (on purpose. I can tell), then look at me with this annoying grin on his face. Again, I have to tell him to erase his answers and write them again. He'll insist on getting a drink in the middle of his worksheet, or some food. He'll suddenly need to use the bathroom. He has to read for 15 minutes per day, and he will ask all kinds of questions while we read: "Why did she do that?" "Where is she going to go?" "Why does she have red hair?" All kinds of stuff. Some questions are legitimate, and it's important to train him to pause and ask questions of himself. This I know from teaching reading. But a lot of the questions are really silly, meant to just drive me nuts:
Dylan: Do you think he has ten toes?
Me: Dylan, he's a person. So probably.
Dylan: Well, what if he just has nine toes? Why doesn't the writer tell us how many toes he has?
Me: Dyls, this book isn't about the kid's toes. It's about how he likes to play soccer.
Dylan will start fights with Sadie while he's doing his homework. All I say, over and over again, during homework time, is, "Focus, Dylan. Focus." It's frustrating.
His new thing to drive me nuts is to write his answers while covering his work with his hand, like I'm a little kid who's trying to cheat off his answers:
I have to keep telling him that I have to look at his answers to make sure he's doing the worksheet right, and to make sure he's not messing around and writing illegibly again. So then we have to fight about that for five minutes. The kid is killing me.
And it gets even better when there are two kids trying to do homework at the same time, distracting eachother! I really miss summer vacation!
ReplyDeletewhat about if you let him do the whole worksheet then look at it, make him erase the WHOLE thing if needed? It would probably save time in the long run... I dunno. Kids are quirky aren't they?
ReplyDeleteYou should teach him about putting a folder up so no one can see the answers. It'll be his own private homework cubicle.
ReplyDeleteGotta love homework time! Austin is pretty good to sit down and do it... Erin on the other hand is HORRIBLE! I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, Jonas is starting to do this! He knows how to spell his name, but sometimes he'll spell it wrong or ask me how to spell it. It drives me crazy!! He'll probably do the same things as Dylan is. I'm not looking forward to that!! Sorry he's driving you crazy with it!
ReplyDeleteJakob will write things really messy sometimes, like loop his zero really badly so it looks like a 6 instead. Then I'm like, okay, fix that, and then he gets all mad. Must be the age. I'm SOOOO not looking forward to having all 4 kids doing homework where they all will have to read to me. Ugh.
ReplyDeletehe is so funny. i remember the folder cubicle thing, i used to think it was SO fun to do that in the middle of class and have my own tent place. you need to blog about the story when he wrote "shut up." that was SO funny!
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