A prelude to homework
February 9th, 2010
What sort of adventure can you have with an apron, a couple of scourers and a pair of rubber gloves? Remembering of course we are talking about a 4 year old here. The nursery teachers must be either childless career woman or they have conventiently forgotten what it’s like to spend weeks, months, even years stuck at home in the never ending cycle of domesticity if they call this….
a recipe for adventure.
Finding the fun element in materials that scream at anyone pounding the homemaker treadmill of drudgery COOK SOMETHING! WASH SOMETHING! CLEAN STUFF! isn’t just difficult, it’s depressing. Who really needs reminded that their life now revolves around tasks that by their very nature can never be “completed”. The satisfaction upon reaching the end of a pile of ironing can no way compete with the satisfaction of delivering a project on time, installing a new system or fixing a customer’s problem. Unlike ironing, if you do those things right you won’t have them to do all over again the next day. There used to be a time when ironing was a mere starter on my weekly menu of accomplishments. Now it, along with the equally sisyphean chores of feeding and cleaning that employ skills I seem to be singularly embodied with in this house, are starter, main course and pudding… if I could be arsed making pudding.
It’s a bit sad when pudding has become an adventure…
Which is why afterwards we skived school and went to the movies.
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I like the idea of skiving to go to the movies… I don’t think Zack would sit still enough though, and he hates loud noises. >_< Maybe in a couple of years… shit, nope, then they're not *allowed* to skive school or i'll get pulled up. Bugger.
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the movies sounds like the best option to me.
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mrsw Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 9:39 am
It was indeed. I highly recommend Astro Boy – sort of AI for kids but shorter since nobody died and let Spielberg take over.
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Did you make the comic book template yourself? I really want to steal this idea from you.
Oh, I am also going to include “Sisyphean” in my description of all household duties from now on. It’s the word I’ve been looking for since the day Violet was born.
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mrsw Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 9:36 am
I made it usein Comic Life – tis very simple and quite brilliant.
Yes – sisyphean just strikes a chord doesn’t it? (oh that it didn’t!!)
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Heather Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 9:49 am
comic life, huh, am going to investigate, i loved this comic look.
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mrsw Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 9:52 am
My OH uses it a lot in school to engage pupils with writing narratives. We just chuck these things at our own and see what happens but I’ll probably make a bit of effort to involve Paul with it in the next year or so – any excuse to take photos of his toys! (him – not me)
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I hate the way they just expect you to have all the time in the world. We often struggle to get my five-yr old’s homework done, if we also want to have a life next to school. They seem to expect you to go home and do nothing they haven’t told you to do, whenever they tell you to. So stupid!
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mrsw Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Oh real homework and me just do not get on at all – unfortunately they have a choice of whether to bring home an “Adventure Pack” or not – he chose to… get out of that one!
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Genius, I love the comic look. Not so genius the “adventure pack”. I’d rather see some flame proof gloves and a sword for defeating dragons.
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