Back to school, tears and all.

We took a few weeks' break from formal schooling, concentrating on outside time and home projects.  But this week it was time to get back to school!  Here Stuart is really doing Sunday School homework, which hardly ever takes breaks, but it was at his (clean!) desk during school time.  So it counts as a school picture.

 

Meanwhile, Marcus has rediscovered lacing cards.  His desk is usually covered in tiny pieces of cut paper, so I had to take a picture.
 
 

That makes it look like the boys spend all school time at their desks.  Really they spend very little time at their desks.  Here's the chalkboard, in the living room, being used to study the six times tables.  Not that we've gotten to that lesson yet, but Stuart marches to the beat he hears in his own crazy head.  Oops, did I just type that instead of just thinking it?  Anyway, the skip counting at the bottom was what he was supposed to be doing, so he squeezed that in at the very bottom when I reminded him.

 

This has nothing to do with school, but it's a picture of our new tree, with leaves!  It's only eight or so feet tall, but a bird perched in it the other day.  Hooray!



If you look bottom left in the tree picture, there are some flowers on our planting strip.  Here they are up closer!

 

Oh, my.  Here's where the tears come in.  Stu has been gone so much lately that he's been unable to teach science for a few weeks.  So I switched Stuart (and Marcus) into biology, and we're studying amphibians.  I figured it was a good idea, with a tadpole pond about a mile away in Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.  Stuart was coloring pictures of frogs.  Marcus does. not. color. but he wanted to do something.  He loves to cut, so I found this printable online.  Marcus cut it out and glued the pieces himself with a glue stick.  That was fun, and no tears.  And here begins the drama.  See the cute picture that he made?

 

After he finished it, I asked him if he wanted to sign his name.  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what a huge mistake that was.  Marcus is a really good writer for his age, but he's got the skills of a four or five year old and unbelievably high standards.  He started to write his name along the bottom of the page, but made a mistake.  Once he realized that he made a mistake, he tried to throw the whole thing away, saying, "Mom!  You have to print another frog and I have to start over!"  I wouldn't let him throw it out.  I tried various methods of dealing with the mistake (turn the word into a design, glue something else over the top, glue blank paper over the top) but he would hear none of it.  Finally he agreed to let me cut off the bottom of the page, removing the mistake and starting fresh.

This whole ordeal really wore on the little guy.  Me too.

 

He resolved to try writing his name again, directly on the backing paper.  I tried to get him to write the name on another sheet so that we wouldn't have another blow-up about a mistake.  That didn't work, but thankfully he was satisfied with the results.  Don't you dare tell him that the R looks like an A.

 

Then he ran off to the schoolroom and cut his name up into a million pieces.

 
What was Stuart doing this entire time?  Making paper airplanes and throwing them, sometimes at me.  Big brother likes to be the center of attention, you see.



Little man, you had better learn to aim your planes elsewhere or I will be restricting your access to paper.