Monday, September 28, 2009

6 year old reasoning...

Jacob just came to me and said, "Mom. I have something I want to tell you. And please let me finish my sentence completely before you respond to it. Okay?" Ruthlessly suppressing a giggle I agreed to his terms. Then he said, "I have decided that I am not going to do my homework tonight and I will explain why in a paper to my teacher. And don't worry, it will be a good reason, not just that I didn't want to do it." I asked what the reason was. "Well, it's just not hard enough homework, so I don't want to do it." I explained that that wasn't a decision he got to make and to go do the "not hard enough" homework anyway. But after he left I got to wondering what the teacher's reaction would be if instead of a work sheet where he copies words like cat, hat, and mat, she got a letter from her 1st grade student saying that he didn't feel the work was challenging enough for him. I think next time we have this argument I will let him compose the excuse and submit it as a creative writing assignment.


"He is one lab accident away from becoming a super-villain."

I fear that one day this will be true of my son too.

1 comments:

Emilie said...

How funny that you should blog about this subject as I was just thinking over this same topic last week.

I see no harm in asking a teacher not to give you busy work, but instead let you complete one big project.

I know Kevin often did not do his homework for the same reasons Jacob did not want to. Not because he couldn't do it, but because it felt like a waste of time. Had he been given the choice to prove he understood the subject with a more challenging project he would have felt more inclined to actually try.

That's my plan for Beckham anyway.....So I'll be calling you to see if it actually works!