Project 365-2015: Day 072 – School Pick-up.
This is the view from the school carpark. At least, it’s the view if you’re parking in the correct place in the carpark, something I am usually NOT doing! (Why yes, we have carparking issues at the school, how did you guess?)
The children are writing fan letters to Kellan Lutz. What have I done? Seriously, my ridiculous, pretty boy celebrity crush has now spread to my eight year old son! Jericho wants me to show him Kellan’s instagram every day (really, Instagram is the best invention ever for stalking celebrities and keeping track of what they’re doing), then he was incredibly happy when I showed him behind the scenes Youtube clips from the Hercules movie, and now he’s writing him a letter about how much he liked Hercules and how he really wants to see the Expendables but I won’t let him watch it! Emma’s writing a letter too, although I don’t know what hers says.
I don’t know. I suppose I just have to go back to what I said before- if they have to idolise a celebrity they could do a lot worse than Kellan, who (as far as I know of him, which is an embarrassing amount really) is a decent kind of person.
It was a really quiet day today. I took the kids to school and stayed to do some more contacting books in the library. It’s good on Fridays actually because that’s the day they have assembly. In the library I can hear (and basically see) everything that happens at assembly and get books done at the same time. So I heard as Jericho went up to the front and read aloud a poem he wrote, then Soren got a certificate for reading for 25 nights (we’re on the damn reading rainbow!) and Emma got a certificate for overcoming her fears and personal growth, or something like that. (Really because she went in the swimming carnival, I expect). I added my ‘bintang minggu’ (Indonesian star of the week) certificate to the pile and that went to one of the preps this week.
I’m going to keep doing the Indonesian certificate, and probably to the kids who try hard every week. Emma and Jericho and I were discussing all the student of the week certificates and getting house points awarded, and Emma pointed out that it’s hard for good kids to get points and awards. Bad kids get points and awards when they behave, but the kids who behave all the time never stand out for being good because they’re always that way. She does actually have a point, and I’m under no real pressure or obligation to give a certificate to every child (impossible to do that, actually) so I will probably lean towards some of the kids I have who try hard every week and are actually learning well.
It was a weird day at home though! Emma kept Luna at school with her all day, so they could practise for the school talent show (Emma and her friend are doing a dog show act with Luna and Poppy) and so I was on my own at home. All day I felt like something was missing, and I kept realising that Luna was nowhere about and panicking, before I remembered that she was at school.
I did a vocabulary test online today that supposedly measures the number of words in your vocabulary. I told this to Troy and he did it as well, which led to Jericho wanting to, then Emma, and so on. I scored 33 500, Troy scored 22 400, Nicholai got 19 900, Emma had 16 400, Jericho had 14 200 and Soren had 10 500.
We just thought it was so interesting to see the big vocab jump between Soren (who is only just learning to read) and Jericho, who has been an independent reader for a number of years. A smaller jump between Jericho and Emma, who are steadily progressing through primary school. A bigger jump again to Nicholai, who has just started high school and is being exposed to a wider array of words and concepts. Then Troy, who has obviously finished high school and uni, although his uni courses were in business/accounting and psychology. Then me, who did Arts at uni (history, Indonesian and education), and reads about ten times more than anyone else in the house.
Anyway, obviously this could all be a load of shit, but I thought the way our family’s scores were spread out was actually a good indicator of relative accuracy. And let’s face it, I’m delighted by my children’s excellent vocabularies!
Feeling the Sun From Both Sides 