Day 53

Happy Sunday.

It is book review time for boy 2 again. My second boy finds no joy whatsoever in losing himself amongst the pages of a book. He gets this from his father. Boy 1 and I love nothing better than ignoring the world and reading a good book. This term the assignment is read a book, write a review and produce a scrapbook that represents the book from your point of view. It is very lucky for my children that I found Montessori as the alternative to “conventional school”, because we wouldn’t have survived home schooling. I don’t have the patience. The frustrating thing with boy 2 is he can read and if I ask him to read aloud to me he is a good reader. But trying to get him to do it is nearly impossible. He is not a story reader, for this review he read The Dangerous book for boys. It is an encyclopaedia for boys with everything in it from making a paper aeroplane to the lineage of the English monarchy. It has instructions on how to identify birds and what books every young boy should read.  This morning after breakfast I locked us in the office and began the torturous task of the book review.  We read through the criteria and I told him we need to focus on the outstanding column in the rubric. So I asked him the rich questions about the book, I asked him simple questions that he could answer with great detail. We wrote a 400 word book review the book only received a 7/10 for the rating and when I asked him why, because he had justified and reasoned and given great information on the book he said because it is a book. I challenged him and said I think your being really hard because the rating and the review don’t match it should be at least a 9 from the words you have written.  His answer – No. We will make the scrapbook tomorrow, on the pupil free day, we both need a break from the dangerous book for boys.

This afternoon was spent with my husband sitting next to the bonfire that we have in our backyard. The boys were outside playing cricket, riding bikes and playing soccer next door. The aroma of the roast lamb and vegetables cooking on the barbecue carried on the breeze every so often. The king parrot the swooped me while I was hanging clothes on the line on Friday, made an appearance. I sipped my way through half a bottle of wine and my husband had two beers while we chatted and stared into the fire. There is something healing about being able to talk about dreams, ideas, arguments, worries, while looking into a fire.

End of day 53

My mother in law mended some dresses for me, two of boy 1’s school shirts and cricket pants. So grateful.

This only took me a few minutes to write, must be the wine. There is a saying write drunk edit sober. Will have to check this in the morning.