I wrote a couple of posts ago (in case you missed it) how Thing 1 has been frustrated lately that there's not enough time at school for her to express her artistic side. Third grade has too many scholastic requirements and art got squeezed out. Even though she has an after school class in which to expend artistic energy, unbidden creativity oozes out of her sometimes.
She was frustrated last week that her teacher scolded her for being artistic. When the assignment came home I saw what happened.
Now I realize that the teacher must have her reasons for stopping Thing 1 from going psychedelic on her assignments... Maybe she's worried if others see Thing 1 doing it, they'll want to do it too, and it will slow down the class. Does she think decorating your homework is one more stepping stone on the path to becoming a graffiti tagger? I don't know... but it was so sad hearing Thing 1 (who is an angelic student) get reprimanded for anything, and even harder to hear she was reprimanded for finding a way to be artistic.
Here's the assignment.
Exhibit A
You can see where she got caught, then had to go back to basic one color shading.
What the heck is wrong with Partridge Family Bussing her assignments? Not a darn thing that I can see. Those little smiley faces aren't making up for the fact that she's being forced into conformity.
Curse the homogenization of the public school system!
--------
The kids saw this post sitting up on the computer screen and I got the whole story.
Thing 1 said she had half finished her math worksheet but then had to go to a reading group. When she came back to her desk the note was there and the (student) teacher came over and told her she couldn't draw pictures because it wastes time and she'd have to do the whole thing over again plain. Grrrrrr!
I finally got the pumpkins unloaded from the car and out to the front porch.
This is $15 worth of pumpkins.
I should probably just take off my last post. Having a rant sitting there is like starting to complain and never shutting up. It's embarrassing. And I would take it down but it took me a long time to write it. So now I want to move it to the past. But I really have nothing exciting to write about.
Except that HUBBY COMES HOME tomorrow!!!
It has been working pretty well to Skype him, except that the best time to do it comes out to be during meals. We're eating breakfast while he's eating dinner and vice versa. I set the computer up at his place at the table and we kind of crowd to the opposite side and talk to him while we eat. Kind of like a sitcom where we're all crowded into camera range. He and the kids often have rather disjointed conversations... the girls get excited and have to run get things to show the camera, at extreme fuzzy close-up. There is sometimes a slight delay in the upload, or it freezes entirely and we have to come around the table to deal with technical issues, but they push through. They were having a knock-knock joke contest the other day that turned into a giggle fest on our end. I made Salmon for dinner (that no one ate but me, BTW) and Hubby kept stalling out his system by uploading full screen pictures of salmon to show us.
It will be awfully nice to have him back on this side of the planet.
I can't imagine what it's like to have your spouse in the military where they get deployed to the other side of the planet for three months or longer at a time. The longest Hubby's been gone was three weeks, and he's in no serious danger, but it's still brutal for us.
I have been volunteering Thing 1 for more clip art. I'm bucking for her to become the school newsletter clip art specialist. But it might just be for this month, we'll see.
This morning she provided the graphics for an article the principal wrote using an analogy about apples and how volunteering helps distribute the work and helps divide things up.
Thing 1 just likes having an excuse to draw something. She is very frustrated that 3rd Grade is so much less creative than 2nd was. She said her "creativity is going away." I can't let that happen, it's so much a part of who she feels like she is.
Thing 1 used Hubby's iphone to draw a picture of herself today. The clothes, the glasses, the shoes, everything is spot on.
Here's her picture...
I was so pleased I went up and took a picture of her clothes. I decided against waking her up and making her get dressed, but I was willing to drag her laundry out of the hamper.
