Thursday, September 18, 2003

Oh, Katherine

She's dropping Tae Kwon Do and I can't say that I'm surprised. If she had really taken to it, it would have been fine, but she didn't and so she'll drop it in favor of piano lessons. Once we find a teacher.

She's still enjoying after school chess. Last week she won against a 4th grader. This week she won against a 3rd grader. It has done loads for her self-esteem! She also attended her first CCD class and it seemed like the halls were teeming with ISM kids. I sure don't see all these kids in church! OK, OK, so there are loads of Masses, but still. Thankfully, she knows one of the girls in her class.
Girl Scouts hasn't begun yet. Her troop leader is in the States until October sometime, so we're hanging out until then. Another leader had hoped that we could combine troops for a while just to get things started, but our leader wasn't too keen on that idea. Rebecca did have her first Daisy meeting last week and was thrilled to finally start. She changed into her cousin's passed on Daisy uniform and everything. Which reminds me. I still need to get Katherine a Brownie vest and transfer all her patches. Why I didn't get her vest the first time, I'll never never know.
How is school going? Well, I need to talk to her teacher. Katherine is an extremely bright kid, but if she's not reminded over and over again, she forgets just about everything. And she brushes off what needs to be done. Last week I decided to let her do her homework on her own. She assured me it was done, and yet when she brought her homework home on Monday, I discovered that for the previous week she hadn't written her spelling word sentences, she hadn't studied her spelling words for her test (she got a 6/10) and she'd only done about 1/2 her math pages. I can tell you that this week was completely different. I explained to her what each day would entail. Monday she was to complete everything that she'd ignored previously. Tuesday, she was to study the spelling words she'd gotten wrong last week and was to write the sentences for this week, along with writing her science paragraph. Wednesday was off because of CCD. Then Thursday would be for studying all her spelling words for Friday's test.
She left her homework bag at school on Thursday. ARG! So I know that while all the other assignments were done, she'll probably do loudy on her spelling test again.
I do have to mention her Science paragraph though. Their current topic is weather, so she was to look for an article or picture that covered an aspect of weather. There was the recent typhoon in Korea on the front page of the IHT, but I told her that was probably going to be a common clipping for her class. So I flipped through some old National Geographic magazines and found a nifty short blurb on a lightning compilation of the world. We read through it and discussed the article and the map (just like her homework instructions said, I'm not doing her work for her!) and then she sat down to write her paragraph. She wrote about the most dangerous areas for lightning strikes, why people are scared of lightning, then she expanded to include some old information she remembered. She talked about how Thomas Jefferson used lightning to discover electricity! OK, I really wanted to correct her, but I refrained. This was her work and I was really pleased that she recalled some history that we hadn't discussed in a long time. Yes, she got the name wrong, but in my book, that's OK. She put an addendum on her paragraph on the basic safety rules of being around lightning. We hadn't talked about that either, so somethings are sticking in her brain.
Last week was the Open House. Ian went so I stayed home with the kids. He attended the 2nd grade portion mostly as the 2nd grade and ECLC programs were held at the same time.
In other news, Katherine has completed her first month of tb preventative meds. She had her first blood test last week as well and got herself so worked up. She was literally walking down the hall white as a ghost and practically in tears. We have a pretty decent phlebotomist though and once the needle was in, Katherine peeked out from behind her hand muttering "Hey, that doesn't hurt very much". The worst part was taking the needle out. But goodness, she's going to give herself ulcers!
I'm not really kidding that much either. There was an evening a few weeks back where we'd put the kids to bed, but Katherine kept getting up and going to the bathroom. After a few too many times, she came out of her room on the verge of tears, saying that earlier in the day she had lied to me. The child can not handle a falsehood and while I'm pleased that her conscience is so finetuned I worry that it's really going to make her sick. (I just wish her sister had gotten some of that, as Rebecca has no remorse over consistent heavy duty lying. Unless she gets caught of course, which is every single time.)

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