Category: The Life of Lara

It’s all here. Adventures in extreme knitting, the house of poop, and suburban permaculture. You may also find rants about politics, ecology, humanitarianism, responsible living, toe floss, and other topics not covered here. Expect profanity and irreverence. You have been warned.

On new beginnings

Today was Squid’s first day at AGE. All morning people kept telling me what a great kid he is, and how much they are looking forward to having him around. He practically leapt out of the car to go inside, and left me in the dust. I had some admin stuff to sort out, so I followed him in, and then watched as he marched up the street, deep in conversation with Anne.

I picked him up, and was again told how well he had fit in with the group, how sweet and empathetic he is, and what a lovely addition to the school. He didn’t want to leave. He’s decided on Tuesdays and Fridays as his AGE days, Tuesday for the Chess Master, and Fridays for Dance, Drama, Cooking, Feasting, and Celebration of Learning. And I think Technology and Robotics too.

We have more assessments to come, and we are still waiting for the official paperwork fro the ministry, but for now, it is easy to feel like we have made the right choices for him this year.

Huge thanks to Karen for dropping over an amazing K’Nex set that she has saved from when her kids were budding engineers. It is already taking over the living room!

Sometimes, the kid blows my mind

Stroop Test

We’ve been having (yet more) struggles at school. But he’s happy. He goes to school without complaint, and I’m just relieved that he seems happy.

But he’s slipping academically. Still “on standard” for reading and maths (where he used to be years ahead), but falling behind in writing.

At the end of last term we had a chat to his teacher to try to work on some problem areas – one that was mentioned was figurative language.

Now, he’s been reading since he was four and a half, and I assumed he had a pretty good grasp of figurative language, so this was a surprise to me. Nevertheless, I took every opportunity to discuss figurative language where we found it, and also asked him to do a few “busywork” worksheets at about the right level. I still felt he understood the material without extra instruction.

Fast forward to tonight. We’ve decided to only speak in general terms about the events over the weekend in Charlottesville, only that people are being awful, and that he doesn’t need to know the details. He’s a highly sensitive soul, and sometimes he has nightmares over world events, so we don’t tell him everything, all the time.

I introduced him to the concept of cognitive dissonance, and how some people will continue to believe a comfortable lie, rather than accept a new truth that compromises their world view.

I then asked him to do a stroop test. He did really well, but admitted it was hard.

Then I turned the card upside down, and asked him to repeat the test. I asked if he found it easier the second time, he said, “yes, because the abstraction removes the context, and only shows the content”.

So then I freaked out a little. And then I asked…

“Can you think how that test, and our findings apply to figurative language, and why authors use it?”.

“By abstracting the content, the author can express a message that people might not want to see otherwise”.

Boom.