School Work

I kinda feel sorry for those parents that don't take the time to help their kids with their school work. You know why? I believe I have learned MORE helping my kids with their school work NOW than I learned when I went through school. Are they giving them better school books than we had?

Actually, I'm not sure if I am learning all THAT much more or if what I'm doing with them is actually dredging up things in the back of my mind that I forgot I learned.

I know...you had to think about that, huh? LOL

I was helping my daughter with some social studies work tonight. They do this thing on the computer called Study Island. We would read through the questions and then the four answers you had to choose from. I would help her eliminate the answers that were clearly WRONG and discuss with her WHY they couldn't be it...then we would discuss the other ones and reason out which one it would have to be. Unfortunately, half of the stuff was about the Incas and Mayans...I never really paid a whole lot of attention to that stuff...I had a vague recollection of any of it. BUT, the other half was about trade routes and exploration. Now THAT I could remember! I didn't have to dig so far for that stuff anyway becuz I had helped my son with that stuff just a few years ago.

I remember when I was helping him with HIS social studies and geography and world history that I did learn a few things. I learned about how the Muslim religion was actually a predominate religion across Europe and North Africa. I also learned about how the African ppl were the ones that sold their own ppl into slavery for money and goods. This stuff was NOT in MY history classes.

My favorite thing to help them with is math. I like math. However, they are both good at it...they don't LIKE it, but they get it...so...they don't ask me for much help.

I like the discussions I have with my son over some of the literature he has to read. He just finished the Edgar Alan Poe short story called "The Fall of the House of Usher". I have never been an Edgar Alan Poe fan but I DO remember that story. What I did remember was the whole family had inhabited the same house and had all eventually gone mad and died from the madness. And when the last member of the family went totally off his nut and died the house imploded upon itself. The visitor to the house had escaped before the house totally imploded. I think EAP must have been quite mad in his own right.

The kids are coming to the end of their first quarter of school. Both of them started out badly...getting behind in their work and it took some real butt kicking on my part and getting them organized to get them caught up. whew. However, come Monday it is a clean slate and there will be NO falling behind.

speaking of falling behind...I had better get my classwork done tomorrow since I won't be around this weekend to do it!