So here’s what we got planned for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Today we stay at home, put up Christmas lights and outside decorations (it’s going to rain like a bastard starting tomorrow, so we have to do it now), teach Klara to read (the analyst says we have to start urgently right now), and have our Thanksgiving feast. The menu for the 3 of us is: turkey, obviously; stuffed mushrooms; cranberry sauce; balsamic glazed Brussels sprouts. And the ubiquitous pasta for Klara.
Tomorrow, we are going to a huge Christmas-themed event in St Louis.
On Saturday, Klara has a Grinch-themed playdate. N and I will use the opportunity to go to a British tea room for which we have a gift card. Then I’m taking him to a place if great emotional significance to me, which is our new local Home Goods store. Yes, I grew up in the USSR. I have an intense response to home goods stores.
On Sunday, we obviously have church, and then friends are coming over, and we’ll have a combined African / Eastern European meal to celebrate US Thanksgiving. (The friends are from Gabon).
Sounds like a lovely holiday weekend!
If you don’t mind me asking, why would it be urgent to teach Klara to read?
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It’s important not to let the school teachers do it. It’s got to be done by us.
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“It’s important not to let the school teachers do it”
Unless the local system is heavily invested in whole language nonsense what’s the harm? It sounds a bit smothery, to be honest.
I generally believe in separation of powers in a lot of areas (parents responsible for some things schools responsible for others) but everything I hear about Us schools now sounds deeply and disturbingly insane, so my idea is probably about 40 years out of date…
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Somehow schools only manage to churn out kids who hate reading. I have no idea how they do it but they are very successful at it. Everything is done at the speed of the slowest learner, which makes brighter kids associate reading lessons with extreme boredom.
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“Everything is done at the speed of the slowest learner”
A recipe for failure all around, I think the slowest learners don’t like that approach any more than the fastest (thinking about things I was slow in learning, dragging things down to my speed would just make me hate it more because it’s dragging out something I’m not into sooooo much….).
I sometimes think educational ideology is about making children hate education as much as possible.
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You might be onto something. Eldest has always been a voracious reader (we read with him a lot since an early age, more than with other two I admit) but he’s also the most “head in the cloud” of all my kids. All three have been years ahead of their peers in reading proficiency, but the younger two hate fiction because the fiction that’s pushed in grade school is boring and preachy. They do enjoy nonfiction (history, science) and graphic novels.
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Happy Thanksgiving! I figured Klara was already on her way to reading since she can already write her name. 🙂
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She writes because it’s like drawing to her. She’s really into art.
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