Why One Question Takes 45 Minutes

Every afternoon I check the teacher's webpage to find out what I'm in for with homework. Every night I try to convince myself it shouldn't be too bad. Math lesson - DD can do this easily. Social Studies - same deal. Religion worksheets - generally not bad, ditto with English grammar questions. Interview paragraph - did that last night (though it turns out there needs to be more added, and DD left the notes at school). Memory work - Done! That leaves 2 questions about the current book (Tuck Everlasting) and a Ferris Wheel drawing & questions (not sure what that is supposed to be, but we'll figure it out) A fairly full list, but no single item seems like it will be terribly daunting.

Arrive home - Math, Social Studies and Religion are done, and English questions are being started. Once that's done, all that's left is the 2 book questions and the Ferris Wheel (?). Easy peasy?

Well - first nobody can work more slowly on English than DD. Only 14 problems, short answer, identifying the direct/indirect objects. And that takes 45 minutes. Then I remind her that she needs to double check her math, as she has missed a lot of problems lately due to "silly" mistakes, even though the work comes very easily to her. (I always tell them that if they truly didn't "get" the math, I would not be as concerned with those mistakes, but it's a shame to get a 'D' because you forgot the units, or miscopied the answer and left out a digit, or skipped a problem altogether) So she glances at the first page and flips it, claiming she's checked it already (Right... in less than 30 seconds you double-checked 20 problems... hmmm....). OK, I need to sit there to ensure she actually checks. She did all the work, but will only pretend if I'm not sitting there. Good thing she did - she found 8 out of 30 which were wrong due to easy mistakes.

OK, now on to the questions. I have read the same section of the book, since I cannot rely on her reporting of it. Question #1 takes us 20 minutes - it's a question which asks her opinion, and that throws her. She wants there to be a "right" answer, and there just isn't one for this one, and she fusses, and pouts, and howls that she doesn't know, but we finally get something reasonable. More concrete than the teacher was probably expecting, but it works.

Quick up for a shower, as bedtime is in 15 minutes, and there's still one question and the Ferris Wheel. Pushed her through the shower process, and got her downstairs. Now I have 3 choices: 1) wait until the morning, and try my luck on getting to work on time, 2) skip it, and have her get an incomplete (which will add to tomorrow's work load), or 3) plug on tonight and hopefully get it done quickly.

The question was, "Describe a place you have been that is powerful. Use lots of descriptive language. What do you see? How does the place feel?" Great....

First - pick a place. DD suggests Wyoming, where we took a family trip last year and I think, "Great! Lots of powerful stuff in Wyoming!" I asked her to narrow it down, since describing all of Wyoming would be asking a bit much. "Mt. Rushmore" Ok, that's not in Wyoming, and not quite what they're looking for. What else did we see in Wyoming? "The wedding?" We need a place, not an event. Where did we go for the wedding? "Jackson" OK, but what was behind the wedding? "The hotel" How about behind you in the Christmas picture? "The bride & groom" Sigh... those tall things? The big pointy things? "Trees" No, the really tall things "Oh, Mountains!" Whew, yes!

But she didn't want that topic, she wanted something else, which is fine, but after 5 minutes of "I'm thinking," I said we need to go with the idea we have now, rather than wait for one that might come sometime next week. Let's go with the mountains. 15 minutes after starting, we finally have a topic. For one question.

Now we have to write it. Descriptively. Lots of fumbling for words so we don't stop at, "The mountains are big, the river is fast." The thing is, when I asked her to close her eyes and describe the place, she could do a pretty good job (after some whining). My favorite description she came up was, "The mountains are like a crystal (insert mountain-shaped, hand-waving gesture here) in the ground." But turning the hand-waving and phrases into sentences (without telling her what to write) takes a while. By the time we figure out the end of the sentence, she's forgotten the beginning. Not to mention the starts and stops to: play with the pencil, play with the hair, watch the cat, watch the brother, check between the toes, pick at a hang nail, and anything else minorly distracting. And the fact that she....writes....very....slowly.

And, Voila! 45 minutes later, you have the answer to a question. One. Stinking. Question. Sigh.... and we're only on chapter 1.