moar funny pictures
I know, no snippet this week. I was all set to come home from work and post one (after hunting one down and immobilising it), but something at work just tweaked that last nerve, and after ranting at my poor coworkers about this I thought I'd share it with you. I work in a library (for those of you who didn't know), but I'm not saying where. I sometimes get asked to help parents help their kids with their homework, no biggie. And because it's February we have parents looking for information/pictures of African American Inventors (sometimes hard to find, but not impossible in most cases). The poor parent who came in today had to create a poster for her child with the picture of the inventor and their invention and we kept drawing blanks when looking for pictures of the inventors. But again par for the course, right? Until she mentioned that her daughter, the child she was helping do this assignment, was four. FOUR YEARS OLD! WTF! Pardon my French, but shouldn't school assignments be made so the child could actually do them? Most four year olds can't use scissors and have to be reminded not to eat the paste (and this teacher wants them to MAKE A Poster?). This is nuts. Why are you giving HomeWork to a 4 year old? Give them coloring sheets, give them storytimes, give them naptimes, and snacks with milk and juice boxes. Aaaah.
OKay, my rant is done, thanks for listening. Have a great weekend.
10 comments:
Oh - I hear you, Ann!
When my son was in 1st grade (six years old) he was given a project to do an a fish. We helped by guiding him through some basic research, but he hand-printed the info, pasted it on poster board and colored the picture. We got to school and EVERY OTHER KID had theirs printed out on a printer - with gorgeous graphics and border art. You cannot tell me that parents didn't completely take over.
And that's just not fair! How is a child to learn to print, color and set up a nice looking project? And the teachers said it was fine for them to have done so.
My poor kid's was the only one in the room that looked like it was done by a kid.
Ya gotta wonder sometimes. :)
So it was basically homework for the parents and librarians, lol.
That does seem kinda silly.
That is frustrating, and the kids take NOTHING from those projects that are that advanced. Trust me on that. My Oldest was given those silly projects to do in kindergarten and first grade and it did nothing to promote his learning.
However, those posters looked fabulous hanging on the walls outside the teachers class room. GRRRR. And to think these people want the state to give them pay raises. Is it any wonder most of Oldest's friends can't read on their own grade level?
Hey Raine-thanks for stopping by (and listening to me whine). :)
Hey Cora- there are so many things they could have done that are more age appropriate, and could have been done In Class. Oy. Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend. :)
Unless the entire classroom's parents refused to do the 'homework', there's no stopping these bogus assignments.
hey hi
i came from the poetry train and saw the burrowing owl...one of my favorite bird species and i was actually able to help save some of their last bits of nesting habitats in santa cruz county
and read the post below.
not to get too carried away here but...
my son is 4 years, 3 months. he can use scissors, has for 2 years. he's in a coop preschool with kids as young as 2 years 9 months and since i'm in the classroom often, i can say i've never seen the kids putting stuff in their mouths that didn't belong other than their fingers after they pick their noses.
my son can cut accurately. he can write his name and he's writing his friends names on valentine cards. he wants to have his own blog and post pictures he takes with the family camera.
he loves doing research into all kinds of subjects on the computer. if his teacher had sent home this kind of project, we would enjoy doing the research. printing out the pictures would be impossible since we don't have a printer but we would have figured something out.
what is important (and what gets lost is) for the children and the parents to do these activities together--to work together, to create together, to learn together. and for the child to see these on the walls of the school reminds the child of that.
and if the homework doesn't get done, who really cares? are they really going to keep a 4 year old back from kindergarten for not doing homework in preschool? nope.
i think the problem is more of the parents who are doing the homework FOR their child rather than doing projects like this WITH their child.
Hi artpredator- thanks for stopping by. I don't know if you'll stop by and read this, and everything I've tried to say comes out wrong, but I'll try anyway. Okay, I'll admit it was at the end of a crazy long day at the end of a crazy long week, but there was more that bothered me about this whole assignment, that the whole 4 year old getting homework just capped it off for me. The other was that in school everyone would have access to the same information and the same supplies (computers, printers, paper,etc), and they would actually look like they were all designed by four year olds (with variation according to skill with scissors and attention to detail). Just a thought.
the owl pic is hilarious. spesial indeed.
missin your snippets here.
Glad you liked the pic, I'll try to have a snippet up for this week. Promise. :)
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