About The World.

Gleanings from the lessons my homeschoolers are currently learning...

God Is A Turtle.

God is also omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. They'd like to know why I taught them that God is a turtle during this same lesson. Yes, "God is a turtle" means that God lives forever. Remember that on your test, boys.

The Devil Made Me Eat It.

The boys were instructed to please not grab all the Angel Food Cake boxes to assure their salvation in front of the nice people looking for coffee nearby. Yes, they were purposely acting silly. I think next time the rules need an extra going-over before we try getting out of the house.It would be so much easier if I hadn't brought all the little kids with me, but you see... that was the point. Trying to learn to get out as a group. Today was week one of "the rest of my life," as I have pledged to taking everyone out weekly, weather and wellness permitting.

(Aside: Boys, you need to be nice and behave yourselves well on the rest of this trip. You wouldn't want people to think that homeschoolers didn't have good common sense or couldn't read or anything like that, now, would you? Ok, then.)

But it wasn't too long until... Elf wanders up the aisles and reads the packages of waffles as "waffle-EEEeeeez." I'm in shock that this child who reads so well at home can't seem to do it in the store. Poor Elf, don't you know that says, "Waffles?" Whereupon Elf proudly unzips his jacket Superman-style to reveal the "homeschooler" logo on his T-shirt while doing this and loudly giggling, "Lookit me, I'm a homeschooler! Does this reading 'waffle-EEEz' count toward my homeschool hours?"

"Um, the lesson that Mom doesn't buy stuff for children who don't speak properly? Yeah, it counts... I think under 'economics'..."

"Sorry," Elf says quickly. Zip goes the sweatjacket. "So should I get a box of the 'homestyle original waffles,' or the 'buttermilk' type?"

Dork. Just put 'em both in the cart and keep moving. Thanks for reading them properly this time.

The bricklayers.

We're reading in the book of Exodus about the making of bricks with straw and without. On our way into Office Depot, we saw some workers and I told Elf and Emperor that they were laying bricks.

"Like a chicken," Emperor says. "Bwuuuck-bok- bwaaaack!"

Elfie thought this was hilarious and they were both clucking and flapping their 'wings.' I got very exasperated with them. I can't say anything to them, at all, without them going on some totally unrelated tangent. Finally I had to explain that bricklaying was a noble profession, and one ought not make fun of others for laying bricks because there's nothing wrong with that.

"Unless you're laying them like a chicken," Elf says. "Bwuuuck-bok- bwaaack!"

Ohhhh... "laying" brick and "laying" eggs. Gotcha. Bwuuuck, that was bad of me not to catch before the big "respecting others" lecture. Which brings me to mention ...

The Curriculum I Feel Like Pitching.

Easy, easy stuff in a workbook that I *thought* would be fun. "The boy has ants in his pants. What does this saying mean?" is a sample question. But I'm getting answers like, his mom wasn't looking and he put bugs in his underwear...

It wouldn't be so bad if the children weren't so SERIOUS about it.