Homeschooling Gone Wrong
Today Noah asked what Thanksgiving was all about. I explained that it was a day that Pilgrims and Pirates sat to share a meal. Dalton stood by, giving me shocked and horrified looks and finally had to interrupt to correct me. It was just a slip of the tongue, I swear.
I have a habit of sharing too much information. I generally use the theory that it is better to say too much on the off chance that the kid is more intelligent than one would assume. I tend to teach to the eldest and let the younger kids absorb as much as they are able. And honestly most of the time I’m pleasantly surprised at just how much they absorb, despite their ages.
So I explained about the Native Americans - the good, the bad and the ugly. And while Noah can understand the theories, he doesn’t have the concrete idea of time or space to put it all together in a realistic picture. Noah wants to understand the timeline so he asks questions like “Did this happen millions of years ago before the dinosaurs?” (timeline errors number 1 and 2 and maybe 3!) and “Did this happen before my name existed?” (a common point of reference for him as he’s proud of his Biblical name). I think we need to bust out the old timelines and start adding things to them as they come up in conversation. I’m not sure we have enough wall space for a billion-year-long timeline.
There is more but its not pretty. I’ll spare you. Finally the conversation shifted to food. “Isn’t that the day we kill the huge chicken?” These conversations just make my kids shine with knowledge and brilliance, right? Yeah, he knows what a turkey is. Being a vegetarian, he doesn’t really differentiate the meat on the table - it’s all just animals with eyes. And somehow this turns into a discussion of where we can get our next Eggnog fix. In June.
Is it bad that I was like “Hey, why don’t you go turn on Boomerang for awhile?!” haha.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:52 am
I have slips like that all the time. I swear it’s right in my head but it comes out all weird and wrong. So who knows what my kids have learned from me. LOL.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:17 am
hahaha!!! My youngest son asked a question the other day about volcanoes. I went into this big drawn out discussion about lava and PLASMA. Thank God my eldest son was in there to correct me. He was gracious enough to say, “um, mom, I think you’re trying to say magma”. The teacher has become the student!
The funniest hs story I have is when I went to VN the first time. My kids came with me to the airport when I left. My older son was upset and turned to my friend and said all teary-eyed, “I hope nothing happens to my mother”. I thought this was a great testament of his love for me until he finished his statement, “She homeschools us. If she dies, we’ll grow up to be idiots!”
June 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Ha ha…hey, who knows maybe the Pirates were hanging out of shore watching.
June 14th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Aw, reading your posts lately have me so excited to get my own little guy home. There is something about little boys the ages you have that just crack me up - you just never know what they’re going to say!
June 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Okay, I’m still laughing at the 2nd sentence. I now have a visual of the pilgrims and pirates sitting down together for a big feast. Hahahaha!
It’s just a hoot reading your stories. I can’t imagine what you DON’T tell us!! :o)
June 15th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Well, of course you need eggnog. In June. Who doesn’t have eggnog for their…summer solstice parties? [shrug]
I swear our kids will eventually drive us all barking mad, and we’ll sit in rocking chairs in our old age, insisting that Thanksgiving is the day we kill a huge chicken to celebrate the pirates breaking bread with the pilgrims.
Gretchen
June 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Ah yes, the pilgrims and the pirates. What a merry feast they must have had with all those large chickens.
I think we’ve all had “pilgrims and pirates” moments. Or at least I certainly have…lots of them.