“What’s up?”
“Can’t we do our workboxes now?”
“We will after this.”
“But I don’t wanna do this, I wanna do papers.”
“Papers?”
“Yanno, the stuff in the workboxes.”
“Worksheets?”
“Yeah! I wanna do worksheets.”
“Me, too!” Agent M. exclaims, tossing the ball my way in anticipation of a mad dash towards the path back to school.
“Instead of playing outside and throwing a ball around?”
“Um yeah,” Agrees Agent V., “Instead of that. Let’s go!”
I have zero fond memories of worksheets from when I was a kid, and almost every child I’ve ever met has groaned with dismay when paper and pencil lie before them. With this in mind I try to plan a lot of active and interactive activities – things like throwing a ball around or playing popcorn (i.e. jumping up and shouting out an answer to a question or recited number/letter) instead of writing down answers, or forming letters out of play dough instead of simply tracing. But around five seconds into the activity, one of the Agents almost always pipes up, “So, can we do our Workboxes now?” Or, in the case of activities in their Workboxes (e.g. play dough letters), “Can’t I be done and move onto the next one?”
As the Workboxes are where most of our paper-based work (e.g. phonics, spelling, math) takes place, chances are the ‘next one’ is a worksheet. I don’t know what it is, but the Agents really, really like their worksheets. But! I try not to indulge them too much, and solidify my reputation as the worst teacher ever by giving them puzzles and paper chains and stamps and all kinds of hands-on things to make them writhe in their seats. I may or may not cackle in the background.
We had a great fourth week. School pictures were taken, and I hope to be able to share a few of those soon, because the Agents were looking fabulous. We began a unit on Pablo Picasso with the book Who Was Pablo Picasso? by True Kelley, which we’ve only half finished. The Agents like to stop and talk about different things, or try to pick out Picasso in some of the drawings. We’ve started talking about modernism, since Picasso is considered the father of that particular movement, and did a project called ‘Modern Families’. Since we read about Picasso using squares and rectangles in his work, and we’ve been studying families in Social Studies, we combined the two classes and made family portraits out of nothing but different sized/colored shapes and rectangles. The Agents thought this was crazy hilarious, but by two minutes in were all business.
We also had our most successful cooking venture of the year. Every Friday the Agents and I storm the kitchen upstairs and make something for lunch. The first week it was potato wedges, which Agent V. declared were delicious in a way indicating he thought they might end up tasting like turnips and chalk dust.
The second week we made macaroni and cheese, as per Agent M.’s request. It turned out incredibly runny, as I forgot to bring flour and the Agents got a little milk-crazy, but we thought it tasted okay.
This week we made tomato soup (here’s the recipe), Agent V.'s requested entrée. Despite a little mishap with the blender, it was awesome.
...unless you talk to Agent M.
This week we’re making breakfast cups, and you’ll have to wait until next Sunday to find out what those are if you don’t already know. We’ll also be finishing up our family tree projects and our study on Picasso, and learn our first chord on the ukuleles. The Agents are particularly excited about this last bit, as they’re fairly exhausted of practicing strumming and posture.
But there's always something to be excited about here, be it an upcoming first fieldtrip or a particularly scintillating worksheet.
Have a beautiful week and God bless,
Mia
