American Axle

While my sister writes about American Idol, I will write about American Axle. The American Axle strike. I don't care so much about the strike, but I do care that it caused my husband to be laid off. He came home from work early on Friday and he still is home looking for a different job. I just hope that one shows up. Thank goodness for unemployment. Kinda scary tho. I don't want to go back to work and I would have just as much hard time finding a job as he does. Besides, who would be the homeschool parent? We've all adjusted to me being home finally. I can't even go to an appointment without the kids worrying about when I'll get home! Weird! It's a good thing we got our taxes back already and have all the big stuff paid off. Yay! At least, we won't be behind for a couple of weeks. Just hope he starts back to work real soon.

Other news, Mystery Girl's new books came for the new school year. She is EXCITED! I can hardly believe it, especially after this past year! She dug right in and examined them all and even sat down to read her Literature and World History books! At least paged through them. So, not wanting to be late or anything, I sat down and planned out when she has to start the different classes. She is doing Book Reports this summer so that they are out of the way. Then she will begin Spelling in mid August. The rest of them will start the day after Labor Day. I have the classes all planned out through the end of September. I think that the timing will go much better this time, now that I know how the classes work and how all the Snow Days and Holidays work. I planned for a lot more days off this time around. So hopefully, we can be more flexible. The kids love our new white board. Wow, they both want to use it frequently. Mystery Girl does written assignments on it and Calico Kid practices his multiplication facts on it. In fact, he's passed his 4's and 5's in just a week each since we got the thing! So, beginning tonight, we can practice 6's. Plus I am able to help him figure out long division on it. By the time we got through all the backed up homework, he was able to tell ME how to do it. It took a lot of worksheets though. I wish the teacher would send more of his work home with him so he could get the extra help that he needs in understanding this stuff, BEFORE he gets behind. But, as usual, I'm a parent, so I don't know how to teach anything. Kinda dumb, don't ya think? Now, if we could just get out of doing "Time For Kids" I'd be pleased! TFK is like Weekly Reader and we have to write analysis of a story from it. He fills out this worksheet that asks questions like

• Who are the people/places involved?
• What issues/resources are involved?
• Describe on cause or one reason Why this event happened where it did.
• What are some possible consequences (things that could happen) to this place as a result of the event?
• What other places in the world could be affected by this event and how?
• Explain how or why a core democratic value is related to this article?
• Choose one or more of the 6 Core Economic Principles and explain how they relate to your article. Use examples from the article to explain them.

So, Saving Black History is supposed to fulfill all the requirements for this worksheet. Oh, I know, it's to get the kids thinking, but I think that it's really to get the parents thinking about how to strangle a teacher! He's in 4th grade! Those answers on the sheet sure didn't come from him! It's really a test on "How dumb are your parents?" or "How can we get parents to do their kid's homework?" Oh, I'm not supposed to? Shucks, I thought for sure.....

Spring is in the air. Yay! The snow is melting and the birds are singing and the racoons have returned to stealing my birdfeeder. Everytime I put it out and forget to bring it in at night, the racoons remove it from it's chain and D-clip. Then they dump all the seed on the ground and leave. The birds love it, but I don't want the seed on the ground! Oh, I also saw an opposum run across the driveway when I came home from church one night. And a rabbit is visiting us. Yup, we sure got critters alright!