10/17/2010 Maple

Julian's class does "Star Of The Week," in which one kid is the "star" each week. This means putting together a poster with pictures, writing your interests, your favorites, and about your family. The "Star" also brings home "Maple," the class teddy bear, and the kid is supposed to take Maple everywhere with him and then write about their weekend in Maple's Journal, with photos.

This is a lot of work for parents, especially when it's handed to us Thursday night due Monday! Going away for the weekend? Good luck with that! Good thing we all have digital cameras and photo-printers at home.

Fortunately, despite some initial resistance, Julian is overall very cooperative and into doing projects. He spent hours today working on his "Star Of The Week" poster, and then the Maple journal entry.

For the journal entry, I was very surprised, and relieved, that he did all the writing himself, with just a little spelling help. I had taken some photos the day before, and much of my afternoon was invested in sizing and printing photos for both the "Star Of The Week" poster and the Maple journal, as well as general guidance, spelling help, and trying to keep him from spending too much time on it.

One of the Maple photos.


Looking through Maple's journal, it looks to me like Julian has some very studious classmates! Their handwriting is all really, really good, and their writing is very coherent and grown-up too. I'd never have guessed these entries to be from a first-grade class, but what do I know. It's hard to say how much help the kids get from parents; the only clear indication of help is lines drawn for writing, but otherwise I'd have to say the kids really did the writing themselves.

Julian's entry was done with no help at all, and no lines drawn for writing (I offered!).

Translation:

My fun weekend with Maple
By Julian
My teacher gave me Maple on Thusday.
I went slideing on a blanket with Maple. But my dad told me to stop. I played Piano for Maple. Maple liked my music a lot. I sat with Maple. She fell asleep on my lap. She was a lot of fun! Thank you for giveing me Maple!

Julian's is by far the hardest to read of all his classmates; like Gabriel, his handwriting is, er, "outstanding" in his class. Here's a typical example of a classmate's entry.

It's also clear that Julian's classmates have a lot more activities on the weekend than he does!

Today's weekend activity, aside from all this schoolwork, was cleaning up the house for the cleaners tomorrow, and watching a highly coveted Star Wars movie as the incentive/reward. We did the retro thing of going to Blockbuster, in a strip mall where I also checked out a Tae Kwon Do studio. It is time for some activities for my deprived little brood -- martial arts for Julian, and dance for Katrina. Gabriel hasn't stated a strong preference yet, but two is all I can handle right now anyway.

Besides, Gabriel's next weekend -- and likely much of mine -- will be spent finishing his October book report.

10/17/2010