Monday, October 28, 2013

Fall Party: Snacks and Snakes

 
Our homeschool group held it's Fall Festival today.  It wasn't easy getting the kids all out the door by 8:30am, since they're now used to sleeping until 8am, but I did it!  They put out quite a nice spread of snacks for the kids but I'm glad I gave them breakfast before we went because it was mostly sweet stuff.
 
There was a woman who's a member of our homeschool group that brought in her three pet snakes and did a presentation for the kids.  She has two ball pythons and a baby (1 yr old) boa constrictor.  I learned a lot about snakes and how to care for them, but nothing that would persuade me in any way to even consider taking one in.  Sammy, however, was sold.  She mentioned a website where you can buy snakes and have them shipped to you, and he keeps perusing it.  Guess I know what I can get him for his "Thanks for moving out of my house" gift in about 10 or 15 years!


 
She kept talking about how "mild mannered" those ball pythons were. What the heck does that mean???
 
Once she finished the presentation, there were a bunch of games the kids could play.  William liked this one, where you build your own skeleton.  He played with this for quite a while.




Owen joined in at first, but then after a while I saw him sitting by himself in the corner of the room.  I went to ask him what was wrong and he sighed and said, "These games are really dorky."  He sounded SO MUCH like a teenager!  UGH!  I told him that wasn't polite to say and to not repeat it to anyone else, because one of the ladies worked really hard to put them together for the kids.  They really were geared towards the younger kids, but that's mostly what the homeschool group consists of; I would say 80% of the kids are under 8 years old, with a good portion of that under 6. 

Owen really wants to go back to public school.  He misses the interaction with kids his own age, even though I try to involve him in many activities including AWANA, the gym class, and hopefully soon, the swim team.  The thing is, he is the one who needs homeschooling the MOST because he goes virtually unnoticed at public school, while he stares out the window and literally learns NOTHING! 

Today we started our unit on South America and we (Owen, Sammy and I) studied the countries of South America for a few minutes, and then took the quiz on Seterra.net.  The first time I took it, I scored 87% and that's where the bar was set:  they needed to get at least close to that.  Sammy took it first and scored 81% and then begged to go one more time.  He got 100% in 23 seconds.  Owen took it and got 54%.  I made him take it over and over again until he could at least score in the 80's, which he did after 3 or 4 more tries.  This is just to show that he really NEEDS more attention when it comes to school and needs to be pushed a little bit or else he will just coast by and be completely satisfied with a mediocre performance. 

So I will continue to do my best to involve Owen with kids his own age in sports and activities, but I also know he needs to be AWAY from other kids during school because he gets lost in the shuffle.  I think he prefers it that way.

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