M. had her first soccer practice Wednesday night. It went about as we expected. She was a little tentative, but active. Her team of eight is split evenly between boys and girls. A few of the boys and one of the girls have some skills. M. will get comfortable and get more into it in time. But at least she wasn’t crying and refusing to participate like another girl. The first game is Saturday.
Each week at school, M.’s class has a featured letter that is the core of their studies. They learn how to identify it, print it, and are shown various objects that begin with that letter. Each Monday night the kids have a homework assignment of finding something that begins with that letter and taking it to class the next day for show and tell.
Lately M. has been a little stubborn about doing her homework. She’ll put it off each time we mention it on Monday, and when Tuesday morning rolls around she often grabs something at the last minute before we head out the door. Once or twice she’s gone to school without anything in her bag. That was the story again this week.
Monday, she put off finding something that started with Q. Tuesday morning, she refused to look around for a queen or quarter or anything else. Drawings are acceptable, so I told her to draw something. She stated, flatly, that she wasn’t going to do it.
Fine. I wasn’t going to take the blame for this; I didn’t want her teacher thinking we were shirking our parenting responsibilities. I took her assignment sheet, flipped it over, and wrote, “M. refused to do her homework,” and stuck it in her folder.
After she got home on Tuesday afternoon, I went through her bag and found the note. Under my comments, her teacher wrote, “M. agreed to do her homework tonight and bring it in tomorrow.” Below that she made M. sign her name. Awesome! M. had a sheepish look on her face when I read the note and was eager to sit down with some markers and paper and draw a pretty picture of a queen, complete with captions. Her teacher sent the picture back Wednesday with a “Nice picture!” note written on it. Glad we’re on the same page.
Now we’ll see what happens next Monday.
❖