Category Archives: second grade

Eleven Things

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• So. The Great Quitting of the Soda. I have only had a couple of days when I drank zero soda. BUT! I have not had more than two cans on any day, which I think makes me a normal person in terms of soda drinking. Yay, me! Don’t worry; soon enough there will be far more zero-soda days than two-can days.

• Quinn has started reading chapter books! Of his own free will he has voluntarily read THREE chapter books in two days all on his own after YEARS of only reading them if I begged him. Weird.

• There appears to be some sort of strange sharpened pencil shortage in Quinn’s classroom. I was there today and there was all kinds of creative sharpening happening. I brought all of Quinn’s pencils home to sharpen at my leisure. When he found them after school, he was like a junkie finding a fix.

• I have still not been doing a lot of running. This is mostly because I have stopped wanting to run in the cold weather. I am trying to will warm weather to arrive. Unfortunately, my area is supposed to get five inches of snow tomorrow.

• People here are calling this storm the Snowquester, because no economic crisis is too serious to make a weather-related joke out of.

• Even though I have had two weeks of, shall we say, less than stellar running, I have run more than 100 miles so far this year over the equivalent of more than a 24-hour day.

• Alex is out of town. If the Snowquester knocks my power out, I will die. If the Snowquester knocks my power out while Alex is out of town, I will kill him. I don’t know why. I just will.

• Do you watch The Walking Dead? Did you watch last Sunday’s episode? Because it was so good. Stories like that are why I like zombie fiction. Best. Episode. Ever. Discuss.

• I think that Quinn is starting to get inside my head. Last night I had a dream about a field full of kittens. I wonder if that is what is happening in Quinn’s head all the time. Because it was kind of awesome.

• LympheDIVAs created the most amazing lymphedema sleeves in honor of Susan. Read Marty’s post about them here. They are gorgeous. I love them so much. They are just so perfect. See?

hubble collection

• Aaaaaand, last, I managed to write an entire White Knuckle Parenting column based on a half-hour ride on the Metro with my kids. Happily, it was a fun story, not a “Team Stimey being dorks out and about” story.

The Concept of Quinn

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Warning: This is definitely a fawning parent post. When in doubt, I go to the school work. My kid is adorable.

Last week, Quinn had an assignment at school to create a concept map about himself. All the kids in his class made a little map thingy about themselves. They also wrote sentences having to do with each of the concepts (not included on the map). Here is Quinn’s:

Quinn's concept map

Don’t worry. I’ll decipher it for you.

Let’s start at the top and move clockwise.

“Quinn likes Dodgeball” Well. Who doesn’t? The real Quinny part of this comes in the sentence that he wrote about it: “I like getting hit in the face.” Well. Who doesn’t? (Answer: EVERYONE.)

“Quinn likes swiming in pools a lot”

“Quinn hang out in places example TV Room with oreos watching TV” He’s so cute. Also, this sounds like something I’d like to do as well. The sentences he wrote for this branch were all things like, “I love TV Room!” and “A great place to hang out watching TV,” one of which is not actually a sentence, but that’s okay.

“Quinn hang out in places example hamock with lemonaid” I die of cuteness. Especially when his sentences clarify that the hammock is a “good sitting place” and lemonade is a “super good drink on hot days.”

“Quinn I hate homework.” This was the only part of the entire concept map that was entirely correctly spelled and punctuated. Oh, also the sentence that went along with it: “Homework sucks!” There is no ambivalence there.

“Quinn used to be a gyminast” Yeah. We all remember how that went. If you don’t remember how that went, it’s okay. It was one of my, let’s say, less proud blogging moments.

“Quinn our pets are 2 cats, 1 dog, 5 mice, 2 gerballs. one cat is Izzy is a Star!!!!!! Cats are the best!!!!!!!!!” I think it is lovely that Quinn included all of our dead pets, including Izzy, who is the most loved of the deceased. But it makes me a little sad too. For his notes about Cats are the best!(!!!!!!!!), he wrote, “Relates to Izzy.” For his notes about Star!!!!!!!, he wrote “Also relates to Izzy.” (He did follow that up with, “Relates to space,” but that seemed to be secondary to him.) I think it is likely that Izzy’s death will be the defining memory of his childhood. This makes me a little sad.

“Quinn likes Dessert” Also, “Dessert rocks just like cats.”

“Quinn Favrite game is Mindcraft” I’m hopeful that one day he learns it is actually called Minecraft. Somehow I’m more bothered by that misspelling than the misspelling of “favorite.”

“Quinn had a cat” Izzy is, like, 30% of Quinn’s concept map. I feel a little sad that the sentence he wrote was actually a question and that question was, “Is Izzy soft anymore?” (Answer: Unlikely.)

Quinn Likes Space (crescent moon, soler eclipse, comet, galaxy) My favrit planet is…Jupiter” Quinn is a HUGE fan of space. I mean, what’s YOUR favorite planet? That’s what I thought. I don’t have one either. Although Saturn is pretty cool. And Earth has been good to me. Regardless, Quinn believes that “Jupiter is the planet king!” He also had some pretty elaborate sentences for his space examples: “I want to learn about solar & lunar eclipses. We’re learning about the moon in class. Superstition says that comets are the harbringers [I'm sorry, I just couldn't correct his all too cute spelling of that word. —ed.] of doom. There are millions & millions of galaxies in the cosmos.

There you have it: Quinn in a concept map. I have to say, it is actually pretty accurate and complete.

St. Sugartine’s Day

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Ah, Valentine’s Day. Who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day? (Me.)

Mostly I see Valentine’s Day as an exercise in forcing my kids to write 26 names each on little scraps of cardboard and checking to see how many of Jack’s classmates he actually knows. I imagine that Alex sees Valentine’s Day as an exercise in wishing he’d married someone more romantic.

My kids, on the other hand, see Valentine’s Day as a wonderful chance to ingest as much sugar as is humanly possible.

In case you are wondering, it is possible to ingest a HUGE amount of sugar.

Sam’s day was largely an enigma, what with his being a fifth grader who doesn’t need mom at his Valentine’s Day party as long as she buys him a bag of corn chips for him to take into school ostensibly for the class, but mostly just for him, thank you very much.

Although his afternoon did end with him hiding behind a piano at a party, so I don’t think we should count sugar out for him entirely.

To be fair, a magician told him to do it, so...

To be fair, a grown man calling himself the Great Zucchini told him to do it, so…

Here is the Great Zucchini himself, bringing joy to a room full of special needs kids and their families—and standing RIGHT in front waving his arms around, Jack.

Jack laughed a whole lot today.

Jack flipped his lid laughing at this guy. It was great.

Many thanks to Sir Zucchini for his show and to my friend B for inviting us. Also thank you for living the “your baby is my baby” philosophy today, B.

Jack’s school party isn’t until tomorrow, but he gave Alex and I valentines today on which he’d written poetry. Now, I’m not a big poetry girl, but Jack writes some good verse.

To me:

Violets are blue
Roses are pink
I really like love
and hate really stinks!

To Alex:

Roses r red
Violets r blue
I’m so awesome
and I ♥ u!

See what I mean? That’s good stuff right there.

I’m going to his party tomorrow, so I am sure there will be a Part II to his Valentine’s story, but for now, what I do have are photos of Quinn, who had a sugar-coated day that can pretty much be summarized in the following four photos.

1. Before the Sugar:

IMG_5242

Ice cream at school?! This was Quinn’s favorite day in the history of days!

2. Post Sugar Ingestion:

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This is what a lot of ice cream, a box of chocolates, and a bag of blue Fun Dip will to a person.

3. Ruh-roh! The Sugar Has Kicked In!

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This is what a lot of ice cream, a box of chocolates, and a blue bag of Fun Dip will do to a person when it is followed up by a loud classroom full of singing second graders and combined with sensory processing issues.

4. Can’t Talk. Coming Down.

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In this photo, taken at the after-school party, Quinn refuses to acknowledge that there is a party with a beloved children’s entertainer going on around him.

I hope your day was lovely in its own way and that you didn’t have to hide behind any pianos or in any cubbies to get through it. But if you did, that’s okay too.

*****

This week at White Knuckle Parenting, I wrote about my kids’ life stages through their adulthood. I was a little more detailed about the early ages, because the oldest one is only 11.

After the Storm There Are Pumpkins

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Hey, friends. I hope those of you on the East Coast are safe and dry. We’re okay. our power stayed on (knockonwood! knockonwood! knockonwood!) and we seem to have gotten by with only a little bit of water in the basement. Because our power generally goes out quickly, we rarely get to watch storm coverage on TV. It looks like it was a scary night for so many of you. I hope you are all okay. My heart and best wishes go out to all of you.

Schools are canceled for us again today, so it is on to Day Two of entertain the children inside the increasingly messy house. Yesterday we carved pumpkins. Well, actually, I carved pumpkins while the munchkins told me where to cut and then grumped about when I didn’t execute their plans perfectly.

I don’t know. They just didn’t seem old or responsible enough to be in charge of their own knives.

I saw a lot of Facebook statuses and blog posts yesterday with photos of people’s really nicely executed pumpkin carving based on really creative ideas.

We decided to take a different approach.

It is a “hack until there is a hole in the pumpkin” approach.

Can you guess whose pumpkin was whose?*

*****

I wrote about Quinn and his fear of Halloween over at White Knuckle Parenting this week. It looks like I’m going to take him out of school tomorrow afternoon because he is FREAKING OUT with worry about scary costumes at the school parade. This is turning out to be a long week without much school.

*****

* Back left = Jack, middle = Quinn, back right = Sam

Giraffes vs. Team Stimey

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Remember how I am teaching second graders about writing, because of my brilliant and age-appropriate writing style? Now I’m doing it in TWO classes, both Quinn’s class and for the teacher who taught Jack in second grade a couple of years ago. I started there this week. One of the kids in her class asked if I could be their substitute teacher AND I earned a star from the teacher. Plus, both classes thought my story that I wrote for them was awesome and that my drawings were really good.

Best day of school ever.

I figured that if 7-year-olds were into my story, you might be as well. Don’t worry, they’re smart 7-year-olds. I’m not underestimating you. Too much.

I showed them how I organized my writing and took notes and then I read my story to them. I chose giraffes, because they recently learned about giraffes as well. Unfortunately, some of their facts conflicted with mine. They were all too happy to tell me when that happened.

I originally wrote this with my last name attached instead of Team Stimey, so I had to make some adjustments. I may also have some commentary, [which I will include in bolded brackets].

******

Giraffes vs. Team Stimey [the comparison kind of "vs."—not the fight kind of "vs."]

Giraffes are very cool animals that have some similarities with Team Stimey, which is my family. [Really, I should have written "and differences," but I didn't reread it before I printed it out because I'm an awesome "teacher."] Both are mammals and are pretty fun to have around, but giraffes are the world’s tallest mammals. They are often 14 to 19 feet tall. [The video the kids watched told them ALL GIRAFFES ARE 18 FEET TALL AND ANYTHING ELSE IS WRONG, INCLUDING YOUR GUEST FAMOUS BLOGGER—PLEASE BE SURE TO OBJECT TO HER HEIGHT RANGE ESTIMATE FOR GIRAFFES!] The tallest member of Team Stimey is just barely more than six feet tall. The shortest member of Team Stimey is Quinn.

Alex and Quinn vs. a giraffe

I accidentally made Quinn as tall as Alex, so then I had to put him on a box.

Because giraffes have such long legs, they can run really fast. They can run for up to 35 miles an hour for short distances and ten miles an hour for long distances. The fastest that a member of Team Stimey has ever run is six miles an hour. A giraffe could run faster than your car is allowed to drive on the street outside the school, so maybe if you’re in a hurry, you should ride a giraffe home.

I should be riding that giraffe.

Try not to notice that my face seems to have suffered a disfiguring jogging accident.

Team Stimey has five members, which is similar to giraffes. Giraffes roam grasslands in Africa in groups of about six.

Six giraffes ALMOST equals five Stimeys.

Six giraffes ALMOST equals five Stimeys.

[When I showed Sam that picture, he asked why one giraffe was in the tree. I guess I have to work on my perspective.]

Giraffes eat hundreds of pounds of leaves each week. Those leaves are mostly found at the very tops of trees, where most other animals can’t reach. Even Team Stimey can’t get that high—and most of them wouldn’t eat leaves even if they could.

Quinn liked this picture a lot.

Quinn liked this picture a lot. He was all, “Salad? Ick!”

Giraffe tongues are 21 inches long [even if the district-approved giraffe video claims that they are 18 inches long, wrecking my whole demonstration of showing how high up my arm 21 inches reached], which is almost as long as my arm. My tongue measures three and a half inches, which is exactly as long as my tongue. [Pro tip: sticking a measuring tape into the back of your throat is not recommended.]

Not to scale.

Not to scale. Also, kind of creepy.

If you couldn’t figure out that you are looking at a giraffe from its shape, you can tell because of its awesome spotted coat. No two giraffes have exactly the same pattern. That is something that is the same with Team Stimey. We all look kind of alike, but none of us are exactly the same.

Stimey and Quinn

This particular section might have worked better if Quinn looked anything like me.

I also discovered that giraffes are very cool. I think I’d like to see one close up. If any of you want to see a member of Team Stimey close up, Quinn will be playing four-square at recess.

[And that is how you write an awesome, factual essay featuring text elements and illustrations. BOOYAH!]

*****

I can’t believe that I have never written about sleep habits over at White Knuckle Parenting. I finally got around to it this week. The takeaways: Newborns are jerks and never trust a toddler with a steak knife.

Seventeen 7-Year-Olds Think I’m a “Famous Blogger”

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I like volunteering in my kids’ classes and I have the time, so whenever they have a teacher that likes to have parents in the classroom, I offer to come in and help out once a week. This year, Quinn’s teacher is the same teacher that taught Sam and for whom I volunteered weekly.

I’m pretty sure that since I gave my talk on autism to the entire staff of Quinn’s school (shoot—I keep forgetting to tell you about that), I think my blog is pretty much common knowledge over there.

*waves to teachers and staff*

Early in the year, Quinn’s teacher suggested that I help her class with writing since I am a writer and all. I panicked on the inside, because I don’t teach, but nodded and said that I would love to do it. Then I ran out and bought notebooks for the whole class to bribe them into loving me and my writing ideas.

It’s been really fun. The kids are way into writing and they are all excited about me because the teacher told them that I’m a “famous blogger.” I put that in quotes because…well, you know why.

Anyway, the kids started out the first week wanting their own websites and then wanting to know what my website was and then the teacher and I exchanged nervous glances and I started imagining the phone calls to the school that would be forthcoming once they showed their parents exactly who is teaching them.

I’ve managed to either write fresh, appropriate material each week just for the kids or to share posts from my past that I thought they would like. For example, I showed them the post about Alex and the squirrel that tried to kill him the week that we talked about illustrations inspiring stories. I did have to change the last sentence in that post though, for reasons that will be obvious if you reread it.

Last week was my favorite. We were writing about informative captions, so I took in the photo I put in my post about AutCom and wrote a caption explaining it. The kids were totally into hearing about facilitated communication and my experience at the conference. It was really cool.

Then the teacher actually, you know, taught them about captions and writing them and then gave them pictures for them to write captions for. Some of the kid wrote informational captions, but most of them went the caption as joke route, which I approve of, as it is one of my favorite schticks.

It may not surprise you that Quinn took this route.

Quinn writing a caption

The close up of his caption is coming up next.

He even added labels and made some additions to the drawing.

Quinn's caption

“dog goes to birthday party and poops on the cake and presents”

I’m so proud.

Although most of the kids at his table had a caption with this theme, so I think it was a group effort. Also, I really did try to be informational and sincere and informative that week and this is what the result was. It’s almost like Quinn is my kid. At least he has an excuse for being immature.

Here’s something though. In the class, the teacher gives the kids a certain amount of time to write and when she tells them it is time to stop, they want to keep going. They are all really excited to share with the class what they wrote. Quinn brought home his notebook home from school so he could keep working on a story he is writing in his free time. They are loving to write.

I love to write. I am helping these kids learn to really enjoy writing too. I think that’s pretty cool.

I can’t wait to find out what is on the curriculum for next week so I can start looking for a mostly unobjectionable post to share with the class.

Collaboration, Q-ball Style

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Without question, my favorite thing about sending my kids to school is their written work. You might already know this if you were around for the Things Come Out of My Brain series of 2010 and 2011 (Part I, Part II, Part III) as well as the many other worksheets I’ve photographed and made you look at.
I’m about to do it again. Evidently “collaboration” is one of Quinn’s vocabulary words, which is kind of super awesome. What is even more awesome is his sentence/picture example of the word, which he hasn’t even turned in yet, but I had to take a photo in case it never came home.

 

This is good stuff, people. Pay attention.

 

“I’m going to pull your head out of the ground.”

 

See how those two dudes are collaborating on pulling that upside down guy out of the ground before the fireball crushes all of them?

 

Coming soon to a dictionary near you.