Bears Don't Have Wheels

The kindergarten homework failure parade continued at the Bishop house last week. But at least we had a win first.

What you see above is a picture of grapes, bananas, cupcakes and a pumpkin. The directions said to cross out the one that doesn’t belong with the others. Madeline crossed out the pumpkin.

I asked her why. "Pumpkins aren’t for eating," she said, like it was the most ridiculous question she’d ever heard.

This does actually makes some sense, though. Number of times she’s had cupcakes? Countless. Number of times she’s had pumpkin in clearly recognizable pumpkin form? Zero.

In fact, the number of times I've had raw pumpkin is zero, too. Seeds? Sure. Pie? Yes, but then it's more akin to cupcakes so we’re back at square one.

I guess pumpkin is a fruit. But come on, when you think of fruit, you've got to get pretty far down the list before you get to pumpkin. And before I wrote that, I absolutely had to Google pumpkin to confirm it’s not really a vegetable. 

Thus, a moral parental quandary for Kelly and me: 

1. Tell Madeline we agree with her but she's wrong and that's just how the world is so suck it up, kid. 
2. Let Madeline turn in homework we were pretty sure would be sent back marked incorrect, further reinforcing her teacher's surely burgeoning belief that Kelly and I are a bit on the daft side. 

Ultimately, we decided to leave the X on the pumpkin, and wrote a note to the teacher asking her to ask Madeline to explain why that was the thing that didn’t belong. The homework came back with a green "OK." Victory! 

The celebration, however, was to be short-lived. This is where the sad trombone of the homework failure parade began to play once more.

The worksheet also came back marked "Redo and follow the whole directions," as some of the problems had an extra step that we’d missed. What we were supposed to do for those was: "Cross out the one that doesn’t belong and tell why." (The pumpkin problem wasn’t among these.)

I assure you we hadn’t completely ignored this part — I’d just done it wrong. Instead of having Madeline write down the answer, I’d sat down with the kid and had her verbally "tell why." You know, on account of the fact that Madeline can't spell.

Okay, she can spell a few things — her name, her brother’s name, Mommy, Daddy, love and a couple of other words. She’s positive this is enough for her to be able to play Words With Friends, yet I remain unconvinced.

Anyway, I asked Madeline to explain why among a tricycle, toy truck, wagon and teddy bear, she’d crossed out what she did.

"Daddy," she began, a little condescendingly. "Bears don’t have wheels." It was like she was maybe 98% sure I knew the answer, but had decided to play it safe just in case.

I spelled "bears don't have wheels" out for her letter by letter and she wrote it all down, and then we redid the rest of the problems she’d missed. The homework came back the next day with an "OK" on it.

 
You don’t eat pumpkin. Bears don’t have wheels. 

Madeline must be constantly wondering, "What is wrong with these people?"