Picket Fence Post

I must say, I’m lovin’ these relatively light weeks for The Paper Project. Although it could just be light because The Youngest Boy missed a day of school this week due to illness and had a half-day on another. I feel like if I celebrate that not as many pieces of paper came home this week as on others, next week I’ll just get swamped. Kind of like mentioning that the pitcher’s throwing a potential “no hitter” DURING a game kind of jinxes it.

Annnway . . . this week’s school paper tally — in which the kids brought home announcements for things like a Pajama Day, an illustration of the life cycle of a fruit fly and a school raffle sheet (for which we families are all supposed to contribute items for themed class baskets) — was only 28 pieces of paper.

That brings the grand total to: 453.

Every school year I start out with the best intentions. Really.

I fill out a family calendar onto which I dutifully note all the important school, family and extra curricular activities. My BlackBerry and The Spouse’s BlackBerry are also inputted with the same schedule. Plus I’ve got a white board (made of metal) in the kitchen onto which I put the list of the week’s events as well as important papers.

I clean out the three-ring binders I bought for the kids years ago and place them in the special shelving unit on which I splurged when I bought from Pottery Barn when the fifth graders started kindergarten.

Then the organization all goes to hell.

Quickly – very, very quickly — I, the designated, unpaid family administrative assistant, become buried in a blizzard of papers and start inadvertently missing things, appointments, etc. For years I’ve written columns and blog entries about how it seems almost impossible to keep on top of the school paperwork the kids bring home and the parents.

This year I’m taking a different approach. I’m going to keep a record of how many pieces of dead trees come home and quantify the papers instead of just gnashing my teeth about them. I’m calling this, “The Paper Project,” where the plan is to tally the number of papers my two fifth graders and my third grader bring home each week.

Anyone willing to put a wager on how many pieces of paper a fifth grader from the suburbs brings home during a school year?

The three Picket Fence Post kids started school this morning in a swirling blur of motion. One by one they left, through our front door and made their way to their bus stops, pausing, for a brief minute to oblige their mom who asked them to pose on the front steps for their yearly First Day of School photo.

But even before school began this morning, The Spouse and I had already screwed up, at least far as The Youngest Boy was concerned.

His class had an Open House the other night. After meeting his teacher and locating his desk, we saw a colored construction paper pennant waiting for him. His last name was written vertically, a line stretching out after each letter. We were, apparently, supposed to have worked on a poem about our family with The Youngest Boy prior to our arrival there, with each line of the poem starting with a letter from his last name.

“Didn’t you get my letter?” the teacher asked, disappointed that we hadn’t done the assigned homework with our 8-year-old after receiving the letter (which The Youngest Boy took and kept in his room) which asked us to write the poem beforehand.

Fabulous way to start off the new year. I guess there’s no where to go but up.

While we watched our fourth grade sons play soccer during a game recently, a parent said to me, “I used to think that the Thanksgiving/Christmas time was the craziest time of the year. But now I think it’s the end of the [school] year. It’s just nuts.”

I thought about her observation for a while and have come to the conclusion that it’s a draw. While there’s more hype and pressure pressure to get all the big Christmas/Hanukkah stuff done at once (you have to get gifts and cards simultaneously for a slew of people), the end of the school year brings with it a crush of non-stop To Do items in only a short amount of time. And if you have more than one young kid in school, you’re exponentially increasing the number of ways you – the parent who shoulders the blame for everything – can screw up and forget things.

Here’s a sampling of the Picket Fence Post family’s end-of-the-school-year schedule for the next three weeks:

– The Eldest Boy is in a school concert this week (which we only found out about last week!) for which I still have to run out and get him the right clothes to wear as he doesn’t possess black pants, a white button-up shirt that fits or a black tie. This concert occurs at the same time as soccer evaluations for “placement” for next year’s fifth grade soccer teams. (Don’t get me started on the idiocy of the annual evaluations which start with SECOND graders.) However The Eldest Boy’ll miss the evaluations and go to the concert instead, which means The Spouse and I are crippling his soccer career forever by making this choice . . . but we’ll have to deal with that guilt later.

– All three of my children have two field trips a piece in the next few weeks. The Spouse is chaperoning two of those trips, one to the zoo with second graders, the other to an IMAX theater with fourth graders to see some educational film whose title I can’t remember right now because my brain is overloaded.

– The Eldest Boy has a class event in the middle of a work day next week before which I’ve got to remember to send some cash in to his room parent so she can buy a gift for his teachers.

– The Girl also has an in-class event in the middle of another school day. I haven’t heard from her room parent regarding money for a teacher gift, but I’m confident that a request will be forthcoming.

– I’ve got to remember to send money to The Youngest Boy’s room parent for a teacher gift, as well as money to the parents who are collecting money for a coaches’ gift for The Eldest Boy’s soccer coaches. I’m sure that The Youngest Boy will have an end-of-the-year event in class as well which I pray it isn’t on the same day as his siblings’ events or field trips that The Spouse is chaperoning or else I think my head will explode.

– The Spouse, who coaches The Youngest Boy’s baseball team, will have ice cream (likely Hoodsies) after the last game as a treat for the players. (Which I’ve been charged with purchasing and bringing to the field.) The team has several more baseball practices and games (which go on for hours, even when I complain to the coach). The Youngest Boy is having such a blast with baseball that he has expressed an interest in playing summer baseball. Shoot me now.

– The Eldest Boy has a couple more soccer practices and two games left before his season concludes.

– The Eldest Boy and The Girl just completed a fairly involved fourth grade U.S. landmarks project (complete with papers backed with research and clay replicas they made of the Pentagon and the Arlington National Cemetery, respectively). Now they’ve each got to complete a “Business” project for which they each have to come up with a product, create it (or a protoype of it), and then figure out how to market it, how much they’ll charge, etc. The Eldest Boy’s going to make his own comic strips/books (I had to explain why had couldn’t just create new installments of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series since that’s kind of, you know, stealing copyrighted material). The Girl wants to design book marks. They haven’t yet informed me of what supplies they’ll need, but given that the projects are due VERY soon, I’d better remind them to hand over the lists, even though we parents only heard about the business project thing last week.

– The Girl has a second appointment with a Boston youth sports specialist soon to figure out what we’re going to do about her ankle problems. (If it weren’t for her ankle problems, we’d have her travel soccer schedule to add to this family’s scheduling hell.) After her appointment, it’s extremely likely that she’ll be given appointments for treatments to hopefully remedy the situation.

This list, of course, doesn’t include a number of personal/family events (social and work-related) that The Spouse and I have because, you know, we actually have lives outside of our roles as parents. Hard to believe. After re-reading the list above, I’m convinced that all I need is more coffee and maybe a case of Red Bull. Who needs sleep?

Which bring me back to my original question: Which do you find nuttier, the end-of-the-school time or the December/Christmas holiday season?

Image credit: From this web site.

Item #1: Passover/Easter Prep

Whenever Easter and Passover coincide on the calendar, there’s a flurry of activity around the Picket Fence Post house. We buy matzo, horseradish, brisket and make haroset (apples, nuts, honey) for a seder dinner. We also dye Easter egg and get Easter candy, plastic green grass and the unnaturally colored things known as Peeps.

This weekend, we’ll have a belated seder dinner at our house, do an abbreviated reading of the Haggadah (the story of Passover), hide the afikomen (a piece(s) of tooth-breaking matzo . . . eating lots of Easter candy makes the tooth-breaking easier) and award the kid afikomen-finders a buck a piece. Later that night, The Spouse will likely clamor to watch the Ten Commandments while the kids whine that they’d like to watch something else.

The next day, following what’s likely to be a chilly Easter egg hunt in our backyard (at least snow’s not in the forecast), it’s off to celebrate Easter with my parents while somewhere our dentist will rub her hands together in anticipation of the cavities being spawned by the solid chocolate Easter bunnies and sticky jellybeans my kids’ll be gobbling up.

Just your average, interfaith family weekend in April. Plus one kids’ soccer game which we’re not sure how we’re going to deal with just yet.

Item #2: New Mass. School BMI Policy Passes

Back in January, I blogged about what I saw as an intrusive, Massachusetts policy proposal to burden schools with the job of weighing students in the first, fourth, seventh and 10th grades and measuring their body mass index, then dispatching a note to the parents informing them of what they should already know by laying eyes on their child each morning at the breakfast table, and about which they should be discussing with the child’s pediatrician.

The Massachusetts Public Health Council has approved this bad idea, which they plan on asking already overtaxed schools across the Commonwealth to implement in the next 18 months. However I was happy to read that there is a parental opt-out provision. And when I opt-out of this silliness on my kids’ behalf, I’m fully expecting to be viewed as an anti-health, head-in-the-sand nutcase. But that’s okay. I like nuts.

Item #3: Mini-Me’s

My GateHouse Media column this month is about how, despite parents’ hopes and wishes, your offspring’s pop culture, decorating and clothing choices are all their own, regardless of how much we might yearn for them to be chips off the old blocks.

“We’ve each got our pet things or causes we want our kids to love too, only some of us make more of a fetish out of using our kids as reflections of what kind of people we are, than others. Some think we should be able to influence our children’s tastes, but it doesn’t always work out the way we envisioned.”

It happened yesterday afternoon. For the first time. And, for what I hope, is the last time. It better be.

The Girl had a school assignment about which she’d never informed me or her father. And had another parent not called me to ask a question about said assignment, I would’ve likely never known about it, until the teacher contacted us to inquire into the assignment’s whereabouts.

“Did you get an assignment to make a brochure about Denmark?” I asked The Girl yesterday while I covered the telephone receiver where a mom of another student in her class was patiently waiting.

The Girl smiled impishly, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Oops!”

Yeah, oops all right.

After I went nutty – telling her never to do this again or else there’d be hell to pay and that SHE is responsible for her school work – I went online to quickly look for some appropriate web sites which would provide her with the information she needed and let her take it from there. (I didn’t have time to watch as she waded through the Internet.) A cursory check of some web sites didn’t yield the type of information she needed, so I fully intended to drag all three kids to the library and let The Girl talk to the librarian about her project while I fumed.

But then, after reading The Youngest Boy’s homework sheet for the week, I realized he had to start work on his animal project (he’s working on a cheetah diorama), plus do his nightly reading. I looked in my wallet. I had no cash to pay off an outstanding library late fee that I’d be required to pay at the library, therefore I’d have to stop at an ATM. Dinner wasn’t even in my mind yet. It was 4:15. So I sat down to do more internet research until I found three web sites which The Girl could look at without fear of inappropriate Danish images popping onto the screen while I was busy at the kitchen counter in cheetah-land helping/arguing with The Youngest Boy over his project.

When The Girl started trying to print some documents from the web sites to use on her brochure, we discovered that my printer was out of toner. Irreparably out of toner. The kind of toner you can’t just pick up at Staples. Fabulous. So The Girl had to go old school and create the brochure by hand, draw the Danish flag instead of using a computer-generated flag image. I then had to write a note to the teacher – The Girl was afraid she’d get in trouble with her teacher (I think she’s more afraid of her teacher than me) – telling her that our printer was out of toner therefore The Girl did everything by hand.

Have I said lately how much I dislike school projects?

Actually, it’s not me who has the homework. Not nominally anyway. It’s two of my kids who have the assignments.

Which is apparently now my problem. Because they’ve been given assignments that require that I (or their father) drop everything and make sure that they’re completed TONIGHT.

My second grader has informed me that for tonight’s homework assignment, he and his parents must conduct a family fire drill, test all the fire alarms in the house and discuss what we’re supposed to do in the event of an emergency. (That’s on top of the 20 minutes of reading a parent is supposed to supervise each night.)

My fourth grade daughter told me I have to let her use my computer TONIGHT so she can go to a web site, “look stuff up” and then write some paragraphs about it. (Yeah, I’m lettin’ a 10-year-old near the internet without my supervision or a parent lurking around. Not. And, by the way, I’m USING my computer right now. For work.)

My twin fourth graders also have these delightful fluency assignments where, on Mondays through Thursdays, a parent is supposed to listen to the student read aloud an excerpt from a book (sometimes a poem) they’ve been given. (A few weeks ago, the passage was about ants and how ant queens would go to other colonies and kill the reigning monarch.) Depending on what skill is being tested that day (accuracy, expression, rate of speed, or all of ‘em), you have to grade the child on a four-point scale. And you have to do this three times in a row each night. That’s when it’s not Thursday and all three kids have to study for a spelling test, and my daughter has to complete a math worksheet in three minutes while you watch her, time her and then grade her work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love knowing what my children are studying and witness them progressing academically. It’s part of my job as a parent to look over their homework. I want to know what books they’re reading. Those things are important, as is the ability of the children to safely navigate the internet and complete math problems correctly.

What I don’t like is the fact that assignments get dumped on the parents with no notice, when we might have other things to do, such as our own work, shuttling other children in the family around, and, oh, I don’t know, life? It’s one thing to give the children an assignment that they can complete on their own; it’s another to give them an assignment that requires direct parental involvement and is due TOMORROW. A little notice would be much appreciated. Many families I know are already harried and running on the power of caffeinated beverage alone (particularly given the hideously late night antics of the Red Sox). It doesn’t take much to send our delicately balanced days off-kilter.

But, I’ve got to go now . . . I haven’t graded my daughter’s fluency assignment yet, nor have I overseen the Youngest Boy’s reading (make sure he does his reading) or helped him with his fire escape plan. I also have to track down the Eldest Boy, because there’s certain to be some parental assignment lurking in his backpack. I was planning to take the kids to the library late this afternoon, since this is the only day when they don’t have some sort of sports practice or game. But, with all this homework I’ve been given, I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.

If I’m not mistaken, I finished the 2nd and 4th grades a long, long time ago, in a lifetime that seems so very far away . . .

Wow, I’ve gotten more responses to the posting of the school supply lists my three kids received than I have about other hot button topics as of late . . . The folks over at the Boston-oriented blog, Universal Hub, wrote about the lists I posted on the Picket Fence Post earlier this week and there have been comments slamming the teachers for compiling detailed lists for everything from scissors to twin-pocket folders, 10 glue sticks and boxes of tissues.

Universal Hub commenter Lynn asked:

“Could this be the teacher’s way of driving home that the school system is underfunded? That was the first thing that came to mind when I [saw] those lists, since I remember, oh so many years ago, most of that stuff (scissors, glue, markers, crayons, ruler) was provided for us. Heck, sometimes paper and composition books were as well.”

But others were having no part of that line of argument, calling the lists excessive and nit-picky. SwirlyGrrl said teachers who were really in need wouldn’t ask for the kinds of stuff on the lists:

“Micromanagers and control freaks, [in my humble opinion], get real specific and demand some needlessly expensive things without regard for the burdens they impose in shopping time and cost. If you fail to produce these items, you get chewed out for ‘not caring about your kid’s education’ . . .”

Have any of your children received their school supply lists yet? For comparison’s sake, it would be great if you could post your lists in the comments section below so we can get a sense of whether this is just MY kids’ school system, or whether this long-listitis is more widespread an issue.

Bring out your lists! 

I was sitting in traffic this morning – courtesy of roadway construction – wasting precious gasoline and hating myself. Why the self-loathing? Because I was headed to a party store to buy a plastic bowler hat and a cheap mustache for my third grade son’s Biography Day presentation Thursday morning.

The Eldest Boy is supposed to dress up as Orville Wright and read a speech that he researched and wrote about the inventor in front of his class and his classmates’ families. (The Girl will have her Biography Day presentation Thursday afternoon and will be dressed as Harriet Tubman.)

When the Biography Day assignment came home a few weeks ago, I rolled my eyes, not because of the biography part — that I like and heartily endorse — but because of the costume part. I live in a community where very little involving our children is done without some sort of flourish (for example, there are multiple end-of-the-year parties in the Eldest Boy’s class), therefore I knew that as Biography Day neared, I’d inevitably clash with my offspring over my refusal to buy expensive looking costumes for this event and my announcement that this domestically-disabled woman would not spend hours making costumes for THEIR homework assignments. (We are, as a family, still recovering from the Science Fair.)

After the kids and I downloaded images of Wright and Tubman from the Internet, I agreed to help them figure out what they’d need in order to dress like their assigned historical figures. We went through my closet, The Spouse’s closet and all of our dress-up clothes for ideas. The result of my “help?” Both children were angry with me and called me, literally, a Scrooge (for not buying a suit – the Eldest Boy doesn’t own one – and an authentic bowler), and insane (for suggesting that The Girl wear a skirt because women wore dresses during Tubman’s time).

So I was hating myself this morning because I violated my own belief that such assignments shouldn’t be dependent on parental economic resources or sewing skills so our children can avoid having their peers make fun of them. And here I was on the road and opening my wallet because my son is deathly afraid of having kids mock him if he wears a costume cobbled together with whatever we have in the house. (He and some of his classmates saw another child this week from a different class who was also assigned to be Orville Wright, and the kid reportedly wore a suit and nice hat.)

Thus I felt trapped in an untenable situation: Stick to my guns and have the Eldest Boy be made fun OR buy a few small items (the hat, the mustache) and borrow a few (borrowed a suit and tie that fit the Eldest Boy from a friend), and (hopefully) spare him from being embarrassed. So when the Eldest Boy wrapped his arms around my waist after seeing that I’d purchased the hat and mustache, I smiled, but felt as though I’d caved.

Do you ever have situations where your child has school assignments like this, where you’re faced with buying stuff/doing it for the student, or letting the child do it himself and have his work be compared to that of an adult or to something store-bought?

Image credit: NASA.

Chaperoned.

A third grade field trip.

And survived.

Was responsible for a group of four girls, including my daughter.

We decided to name our group “The HPs” (for “The Harry Potters,” The Girl is obsessed with all things Potter). When we went from one exhibit in the Boston Museum of Science to another, we formed the Hogwarts Express, and wound our way through the halls.

Then our group — along with the other third grade classes — took Duck Tours around the city of Boston, where an open, bus-like vehicle takes passengers to see landmarks by land and via the Charles River. Our tour guide wore pajama bottoms. And bright red sneakers. And was quite charismatic.

When we finally arrived back at the school, I was relieved that no one had gotten lost, injured or was panicked by the jarring electricity/lightning show.

Unfortunately, The Eldest Son, who also went on the same trip, was upset because his father didn’t get picked as a chaperone from among the parents’ who’d applied for the job. (I’ve only chaperoned once — for a trip to a farm with the Youngest Boy’s kindergarten class last year — and The Spouse hasn’t gone on a trip yet, though we’d hoped we’d both be able to do it this time.) The Spouse promised that he’d make it up to him. Maybe when they walk in historic steps along the Freedom Trail on a future trip.

While my chaperoning experiences were spared any melodramatic theatrics, have you ever had anything interesting happen when you’ve accompanied your kids on field trips?