Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Summer Is Short And So Am I


Summer Is For Fun



Standing in at a whopping 5' 2" this mini mom has a gigantic complaint. This summer was way too short, and the math packet and reading list infringed on our rights to relax and enjoy. The school year is just that, the school year and not summer vacation. Due to the extreme weather last winter we were dismissed from school well into the month of June. To prevent that from happening next year, the powers that be decided to return to school prior to Labor Day. That left us exactly 67 days to get our summer on. I am a supporter of going back to school before Labor Day, but this year was just not fair. Hind sight is 20/20 so , please do not go back to the other formula because global warming is real, and the weather patterns are changing.

People Please

 

  One of my problems with the district math packet is that I have to download and print it myself in order to save education dollars. Well please be considerate enough to condense the number of pages down considerably. In seventh grade we do not need a " color me" front page with our name on it. I also do not find it necessary to print three mostly blank pages with one line of directions printed across the top and an entire sheet of blank paper to make a graph. We have scrap paper here for that. Is it really necessary to add all the color graphics of smiley suns and umbrellas that chewed up all my color ink cartridges? In our house we learn every day about conservation and frugality.
 Most importantly, you want us to take seriously a district wide publication with numerous spelling, grammar, context and mixed gender errors. Who checked this packet for proper CUPS? For those of you who do not have kids in school that is Capitalization, Use, Punctuation and Spelling. I say ditch the math packet and let them spend time languishing in the sun playing wall ball at camp where they can learn to share and be tolerant of others.

 How Many More?

 
 I would rather hear my kids shrieking in delight over water balloons, wiffle ball and late night man hunt expeditions than moping and moaning around the house about the summer reading log.I trust well enough that one day they will discover the power of reading for recreation.
I love to read, and I spent hours pouring over the Game Of Thrones series this summer with my college son in the back yard, but I believe an 11 year old can get more enrichment out of spending an afternoon with his Grandfather fishing vacant ponds and learning how to remove a hook from a perch.
 We spent hours baking in the sun visiting oyster grants and learning how oysters were raised. We clammed the muddy flats endlessly and learned how to make chowder and serve oysters on the half shell. These are the stories I want him to remember long after I am gone. When I look back on my summer days in Eastham, Mass. at the family cottage clamming,

 sailing,  watching fireworks, having beach fires and lobster bakes, I think fondly of the packs of kids who came together as summer folk and took the beaches by storm.I do not recall sitting side by side with any pesky summer school work and comparing decimals and fractions. We compared our tans and made friendship bracelets and swore our endless love to one another.



Oystering in Wellfleet Harbor

When I asked my youngest son what was better about summer than math packets. he said making new friends and playing beats that hands down. He may be onto something there. Who couldn't use more friends and exercise? I know the teachers want us to brush up on our skills and keep in the school mode, but there is a lot to learn at the ball park, like on base percentages, batting averages, probability, distance to the fence and teamwork. Certainly no one can argue that being together as a family, especially as the older kids grow up and go off to schools farther away from home can ever be replaced with supplementary work. My favorite projects of this past summer involved saucers of water, matches, corks and an upturned glass to practice the weird science experiments we watched online. learn something cool here

Looking For Something To Do?




 This summer we learned how to make fried cheese in the restaurant with the cool line cooks, picked blueberries and made an awesome dessert, built a greenhouse and planted a garden with the vegetables and flowers we grew from seeds.
We perfected our breast stroke, rode a bike for the first time and kept score at bowling and baseball. We visited the flea market and bargained for treasures. On a road trip we listed all the state license plates and looked up the capitols for every state by opening a hot spot on our phone to power the computer from the car. Then we returned home and used the same hot spot technology to close the credit cards at the restaurant when Cable went down.  Instead of calling 911 to report that our television was not working we employed this  kind of critical thinking and modern ingenuity that is going to set today's students apart from the rest in the competitive world of the job market of the future . The truth and harsh reality is that you cannot learn it all from a book or summer math facts. You need to be on the cutting edge of the ever changing and fast paced world that the internet has opened up to all of us. So if my kids want to take the summer off now to enjoy the last precious years they have to unwind and chill out with friends, I am going to support that wholeheartedly. Believe me, when school starts up again and the assignments pile up I will be there cheering them to the finish line with every creative thought and suggestion possible to get the most out of their academic surroundings.

  This Is America So Everyone Has An Opinion



To all the people out there who will criticize us for waiting until the last day to finish those projects, I say welcome to the real world. It is about making choices and we chose to enjoy our long lazy days of summer because they are precious. Winter is coming and we have plenty of time during the school year to retrain our brain.  It is Christmas at Costco already for crying out loud! This is about time management and getting prepared to get back into the routine. If the schools were more prepared in June we could cover next year's books and fill out the numerous emergency cards so we can actually spend the first week of school with congruent and official homework. Or we could spend those last half days getting a jump on our summer reading list outside under a shady tree.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten was a best seller written by Robert Fulghum.  Things like: 

“It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to bed just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back..”

I want my childhood back too



 Or this:

“Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.”
   When it comes to school verses summer, maybe we all should have stopped in kindergarten. And just maybe this book should be on everyone's summer reading list. The basic concepts of sharing with each other, making friends not enemies, following directions, playing fair and being nice to each other even if we seem different on the outside are missing from most of the adults I know. If the world were able to adopt just half of these policies, we may one day see the end to global fighting. School is not for everyone, but vacation is. I want my kids to spend their vacations connecting with our family,  their community, and the great wide world that they will soon enough have to take on without me.
Thanks for reading
Teach your kids something new today that they may not learn in school
And be nice to as many random people you meet. 
They probably all want their childhood's back too.
Bee El