So the plan for this year

[conuly]

is that the boys get picked up from school by the mother of one of their classmates, and then I pick them up and transport them to a third babysitter until their mom gets home.

This is probably saving their mom $$$ in daycare, but the kids have had some time adjusting, in particular the older boy, because all the kids are either much younger than he is or dedicated high schoolers who focus on their homework.

So one day a week I'm trying to get them early so I can tutor him a bit, and really this is because I want to tutor Eva's best friend and I think she'll work better if she has another kid in her grade to work with.

But maybe he needs his own tutoring, because he bombed his first math test of the year, this after swearing that he had no math homework all month, which is a load of bull. (Babysitter 1 is asking his teacher tomorrow, and if she agrees that she didn't assign math homework, I'll buy him a soda.)

Anyway, I picked him up today and asked, as you'd expect, if he'd finished the reading comprehension packet that was assigned last week and is due tomorrow. "He told me he'd done all his homework!"

Uh-huh.

On the way to Babysitter 3, I set out a new rule. "If a grown-up asks if you have homework, and you're not sure, don't say no. Just open your bag, look in your folder, and check."

"How did you know I say no when I'm not sure!"

Um, I've met you? Also, I was a kid once.

"Oh, so when you were a kid you didn't want to do your homework either?"

No, when I was a kid I didn't do my homework*, but the difference here is that when I was your age, I never got a 27 on a test either. I got straight 90s and 100s.

In other news, today I taught him cursive f, m, and n. As he noted, he can now write "a dirty word", because he knows all the letters for it. All he has left to learn is o, p, r, s, x, y, and z. Oh, and the capitals. Tomorrow we'll do y and o, Wednesday we'll do p, r, and s, Thursday we'll do x and z. And next week we can start capitals, which the girls should review too anyway.

* And I lacked the appropriate skills and structure to do it either, but I didn't want to delve into that one.

Comments

[flexagon]

today I taught him cursive f, m, and n. As he noted, he can now write "a dirty word"

I initially thought of "feminine", and then "famine".

[conuly]

Ah, well, it only involves one of those letters, you see - 'k?

[flexagon]

I see what you did there. :-)

[conuly]

What, what did I do!?

[wpadmirer]

I love tutoring boys. I don't know why. They're pains in the ass, and challenging as hell, but there's something satisfying about getting them to listen and respond.

[zhelana]

seems he can write two dirty words with those letters :D

[conuly]

He can write a few of them, but some of them are not funny even to joke about and some aren't that serious :)

[archangelbeth]

Oh, cursive. I hated cursive. I still hate cursive. My handwriting makes doctors look legible... Unless I'm trying to be readable, and then I look like a gradeschooler. *sigh*

Good luck!

[conuly]

I was poorly instructed in cursive, also poorly instructed in print. Combine this with being lefthanded + some undiagnosed fine motor skill issues (my mother's explanation is that the school said I could be in gifted classes AND get speech therapy, or I could be in gifted classes AND get therapy for my motor skills, or I could not be in gifted classes. This is illegal and nonsense, but I doubt she was in a position to fight it, so they went with the speech), but I learned it so I could teach the nieces when I saw that Ana was being very poorly taught how to print.

[archangelbeth]

I... have no idea if I was taught how to print in any way that was sensible or not... (I was vaguely homeschooled till about 8 or 9. This wasn't too bad with reading, 'cause I'd had the Glen Doman/IAHP.org teach-your-baby-to-read thing, which I did with my kid, so there's 2 generations of "Yup, the reading part really works"... O:> Ahem.) My spelling was... Elizabethan, to say the least, though.

My notes in college tended to be very-small (half of a standard or college-ruled line, so 2 lines per blue line...), and a mix of cursive and printing.

But not a leftie! My mom's a leftie, though. Her handwriting is... *side-eyes*

[conuly]

I have Opinions on how to teach children to write. In a nutshell, I think people start too fast. They need to spend a lot more time on prewriting activities, and then carefully structure all writing activities so the kids can't develop bad habits like holding their writing implements in their fists. (And honestly? If we're going to keep arguing over cursive, it'd be better if we give up on this method of teaching print for a few years and then squeezing cursive in. Most places teach cursive first. Let's go back to that.)

[archangelbeth]

Or teach both printing and cursive at the same time? Like, here's the A!
There's this A, and this a, and this other a that looks like an o with a stick, and then that version becomes the cursive A (both big and small) and isn't that cool!

I remember when I thought cursive was an entirely different language. Like Arabic. Seriously, I remember being in the car and going "that's not english" at it. I think I was probably somewhere between 4-6.

[conuly]

Could get confusing for muscle memory.

[archangelbeth]

*wobbles hand* Maybe. But familiarity with the fancy lower-case A, and really you only need Printed A and cursive a to practice (big and little cursive A, but they're the same A, IIRC). Same with B? F and T are where things get a bit weirder, and I always said, "Cursive capital G is stupid. I will make a G, and then I will double-back on the "-" part of the letter and go with the rest of the word. >_>

Cursive G is surreal.

[conuly]

So, there are different script hands. In many of them capital G is written like lowercase G, but bigger. And if you play around with it you can see how that G eventually evolved to the one you're thinking of.

[archangelbeth]

...that actually makes sense. NOT THAT ANYONE TOLD ME THIS WHEN I WAS LEARNING. *mutter mutter mutter*

I'm still sticking to my mutant version.

[conuly]

Nobody told me either, and I think it would've helped. See also: the Q, the s, and the z. Don't ask me about that last one. Still can't figure it out.

[archangelbeth]

Oh, right, Q looks like a 2. Another one I just do the O, then the \ leads into the rest of the word. >_>

The Z, I can explain! You rotate it about 45 degrees, then give it a tail so it doesn't look like an N, basically. ...I can only explain it because it's in my name, so I've stared at it a lot, going "what the heck is that thing doing? ...ohhhhhh".

S is just S with a stroke up through it, from tail to top (that gets drawn first), and the little version loses the top.

This is why I'd be inclined to teach both at the same time, if focusing muscle-memory on the cursive -- many of them do have the bones, and being able to connect the cursive you're learning with the text that you read in books... It might help dispel the whole "cursive is another language" thing.

(The "same bones" is probably why some people got the bright idea to teach printing first -- "it's just printing with the letters connected!" ...except when it isn't.)

[jack]

Agh, difficult. Well done.

[orcofnewyork]

It always cracks me up that some kids forget adults used to be kids. "How could you know that I do/did that?" etc.

[conuly]

Yes!

[archersangel]

i've forgotten like 90% of the cursive i learned. i just know enough to sign my name.