I overheard Brent telling Savannah, "Sometimes your mother spends over an hour on a single paragraph when she is on her blog!" I didn't like that comment one bit.
So I sat down now with only 15 minutes to write. It's thursday and in 20 minutes I am off to a night of piano and ballet lessons and hours in the car. It's kind of an experiment, but Sweet Caroline is really messing me up already. She has interrupted me three time in the first two sentences ( and only one minute) to tell me about how her sucker is like lipstick, she found a tag inside Marcus's stocking, and also to beg me to play "Christmas" again with her. . . so and I am having a hard time speed writing and tuning her out at the same time.
The reason why my writing style came up was because Savannah said that she finished her school essay quickly in class the other day and then sat back down at her seat while all the other kids were still just getting started. Her teacher stood up then and announced to the class, "If you are all done with your essay, you should not be proud of yourself. You should be very ashamed!" Savannah is no idiot and being the only one finished she took this as a personal attack. So Brent was explaining that in writing it does help to use the allotted time and try to better your writing, like her mother does.
We have always enjoyed Savannah's class narratives. Anytime she gives us a report she is constantly changing back and forth from Savannah to teacher voice. After she told us about this essay comment she complained that every time she turns her work in or also if she makes one tiny mistake her teacher immediately lets out a "Nascar Speed Racer, Mile a Minute". That's her fourth grade nickname apparently. Brent said next time she says it Savannah should follow it up with a "VROOM, VROOM!" I seriously hope she has the guts to and if her teacher has a negative reaction, I want to hear about it.
This week the two older girls are trying out for the school musical, "Suessical, Jr". They both made call backs last night. Unfortunately Kennon got callbacks for the part that Savannah wanted and we had lots of tears. But after listening to the music as a family we all convinced Savannah that Gertrude McFuzz was just as good, or better, than Mayzie Bird. And we reminded her of all the girls in her class that would love to have a call back and really she should be glad to have a part. Like for instance the daughter of the mother that I talked to while we were waiting to pick up our kids from tryouts. She asked if my kids had been busy practicing, YES, then she said, "And practicing all their dance moves?" Huh? I didn't know there were dance tryouts?
I was a little confused. Savannah and Kennon cleared up the confusion when they told me about her daughter's tryout. While singing her lines she was twisting turning, bending over, swaying . . her mother had worked up an entire routine. I guess it was pretty funny and maybe a hair over the top. (Caroline just asked me about PBS kids and now the TV is on. . Why didn't I think of that? Without a TV a four year old girl never stops talking!) We are all pretty excited about the musical and I'm crossing my fingers that they both have a good part and this is going to be yet another competition between Kennon and Savannah where one has to take the backseat. It's tough for the two of them. Almost like they are twins, really.
Caroline is always talking but still talks like a kid, not one that will be in school next year. Like just now she told me, "Yes, it sure diz". When Caroline is talking Diz is Does. It's totally my fault. I hardly ever correct her. So I am bad parent or grammer teacher but from experience I know that all kids grow out of the speech problems way too quickly and I always miss the good old baby talk days. What would I give to hear 1st grade Savannah try to tell the lady on the airplane what grade she was in again? "So what grade are you in?" " Foorst" With surprise, "Fourth?" Then a angry Savannah, "NO, FIIIIIIST!" "Fifth?" This went on for a while. Till I finally stopped laughing in front of them and turned around and said, "FIRST".
So there is my NASCAR speed racer, mile a minute post. . .And I even spellchecked. And forst and diz are definitely not words according to this machine. But so cute!
4 comments:
I had a few thoughts as I read your post:
1. What's with Savannah's teacher?? I read in an earlier post what she said to you at Parent Teacher Conferences about Savannah reading too quickly. Since when has being extremely smart been a BAD thing? Sometimes elementary school teachers are WEIRD.
2. Don't feel bad about not correcting Caroline. As part of my major, I took a linguistics class in college, and we had this whole big unit about speech development; research shows that correcting children under five on the way they speak makes absolutely NO difference in their development.
3. I have a sister just older than me, and, like your girls, we were always competing. It was very hard. In the last few years, we've FINALLY gotten to the point where we can hear each other receive compliments, etc. without feeling like it's a competition. She is my best friend now.
Hope you enjoy your busy night!
I envision Chloe and Lily that way in a few years...always competing with eachother. Good luck with that! Just make sure that they both know how special they are and that you love them no matter what~they'll figure the rest out! Competion is healthy and keeps them highly motivated!
Caroline will rise to any occassion- so I wouldn't worry about your parenting skills. I think you've done an amazing job==You've got amazing kids!
I usually take the teacher's side being a former teacher, but this one sounds totally wacked. I know I used to get frustrated when I planned for the class to spend 30 minutes on something and a few of the speedies were done in 5. But I always tried to plan something else for them to do, if not told them to read a book or work on something quietly. As long as she's not disrupting others I don't see the problem, and I don't like the labels she's throwing around. Public eduction!!!!! What can you do?
we still laugh about when savannah was at your parents saying "fosty, fosty" and they couldn't figure out she was saying thirsty.
have you said something to the teacher about namecalling in front of the class like that? you don't want the rest of the class turning on her or anything...
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