Happy Leap Day

Cailey, Mia, and Luke are having no adventures right now. They are asleep. I'm gonna write about what ever I want.

My title is sarcastic. Really, does February need an extra day? One more day to be sick? One more day to be cold? One more day to be cooped up? One more day to have your van fall into a monster pothole popping your rear tire? I think they made it short for a reason; let's not go and make it longer than it has to be.

This has been a long week. Monday was cheerleading. Tuesday was waiting for our van to get new tires from the aforementioned pothole. Wednesday was catechism. Tonight I had some professional development after school, grocery shopped, and got home at 6. I haven't been home all week. At least tomorrow is Friday, tgif.

The girls have a stack, a huge stack, of papers on the kitchen table I need to go through and figure out which ones need correcting, done, or thrown away. Between the two of them they have killed a small forest I think this year with all their worksheets and workbook pages. I'm seriously thinking of looking into some alternative, project-based school.

Can I vent about kindergarten? Supposedly the guideline is 10 minutes per grade per night. So, for 1st grade it would be 10 minutes, 2nd grade 20 minutes, etc. Well, I don't know if kindergarten should be 5 minutes then or what, but we can spend an hour doing school stuff a night. And keep in mind we've got to start getting ready for bed by 7:30. We are supposed to write each day, read baggy books each day, read browsing box books each day, write numbers to 100 each day, practice handwriting each day, practice spelling challenge words each day, and correct their mistakes each day. We don't get it done and I'm feeling like a failure as a parent here; it is no wonder many parents and students are burnt out on school by the time I get them in 7th grade. I'm burnt out and the girls are burnt out. Kindergarteners should like school.

The girls know it too; they cherish their afterschool time. They'll even tell me if we can't get home right away, "You are wasting our playing time." They know they should be getting to play more. Even their recess activities are picked for them by their teacher. Cailey is constantly lamenting her preschool days when she could pick her centers.

The girls are yet again going to not get their Pizza Hut coupon for reading enough books this month. Instead of reading easy picture books and racking up the numbers we are reading all of EB White's books.

Ok, enough feeling sorry for myself and my poor kindergarteners. Just jealous of daddy getting to go to "Tes-kiss" (Luke's version of Texas) again. Where it is warm. And sunny. And no homework.