- Brian really likes a song called “High School Confidential.” (It has already been established that I am a bad mother.) He doesn’t hear the words correctly though, so when he sings along or requests the song he says, “Ha stu compadoo.” He comes by his misheard-lyrics heritage naturally, as I have been known to mangle a few songs in my day. (My favorite is thinking that “Raspberry beret” was actually “Rags, baby, hurray.” Which is totally supported by the line that follows. Of course, had I only known what the title of the song was, I probably could have saved myself some embarrassment.)
- Max has been “provisionally” put back in the gifted program at school. He has been tested, and received passing scores, so they are letting him back in. I think the scores still need to be formally evaluated or something and then he can be in for real. He had to meet 3 of 4 requirements for ability, achievement, creativity, and motivation to be eligible for the program. They took last year’s CogAt scores for the ability portion. The accepted minimum is 96, he scored 99. He received a 98% on the creative test, the minimum accepted is 90. They tested this by having him draw pictures from various doodles. (True story.) They used the Hawthorne test for his motivation score. I have no idea what this test is. He needed at least a 90 and got a 97%.
- As part of his nightly homework, Max has to read for 20 minutes and write about what he read in a journal. Last week he was reading one of the Harry Potter books. He wrote, “The introduction Luna Lovegood foreshadowed” a specific occurrence. His teacher was all, “Whoa” when she read that. Because, really? A third-grader talking about foreshadowing?? Crazy! I wasn’t overly impressed though, because I assumed Max had read that thought online at the Potter wiki and then unintentionally plagiarized it. So I asked him about it. Turns out he came up with it all on his own. Momma says, “Whoa!” For the record, he learned about foreshadowing from Homestar Runner. (It’s already been established that our kids are weird.)
- In other Max school news, he is working on his first research paper! He picked the topic of “How laws are made.” This has led to many political and historical discussions at the dinner table. Kevin is pretty much in heaven. 🙂 I remember my first paper was in the third grade too. My topic was Botswana. I don’t remember anything that I learned, except its location. Heh.
- Kevin and I voted on Saturday and it was exciting to mark my choice for The President of the United States. I haven’t been that excited since the first time I voted. There are reports that over one million people in Ga, about twenty percent of the eligible voters, have voted already. There is early voting going on at our local library this week too. Every time I drive pass, which is several times a day due to its location, the parking lot is overflowing, which is very unusual.
- I went used-book shopping last week and bought many, many trashy beach reads. Stuff like Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz. They are fabulous in their utter lack of anything educational in them! I also bought a collection of classic short stories by American writers for Max. I started reading the book, to check its content. What a snoozefest! There are probably only half of a dozen good things about being middle-aged, but not having to read “classic” literature anymore is definitely one of them. (Thanks, Mom and Dad for my college education. I appreciate it, really.) Excuse me now while I snub the book I got for Max and read about a genius dog who can play scrabble instead.
Comments
2 responses to “Learning and Junk”
I’m curious, what specifically in Homestar Runner taught him about foreshadowing?
Some very funny kid stuuf, and Hurray for voting! Ivoted last week. Isn’t it great to be part of democracy.