Back to School

Whew!!! It feels like I have been put through the wringer this past week. The KiDS just had their second quarter exams and I have been playing tutor/grand examiner in one. I am not bragging when I say my KiDS are smart (hehe - medyo lang), but I have to be be smarter! Otherwise, it will be the dreaded "but teacher said..." And who is Mama to argue with teacher?

Is it just me or are kids learning more advanced stuff these days? My five-year old who is in Prep just had an exam in Filipino at Sibika about yamang lupa at yamang dagat. I don't think I even had a Social Studies (yes, that was what it was called way back when) until I was in grade 4. My grade 2 student is learning about life cycles and food chain. I know I learned about the food chain from a cartoon show. Fish eat plankton, shark eats fish, man eats shark. (I love the line in Jurassic Park which goes - God creates Man; Man creates dinosaur; Dinosaur eats Man; Women rule the earth. But I could hardly use that as an example.) I had trouble explaining pangngalang basal at lansak, tuwirang layon, etc. to my 4th grader because I could hardly understand them myself.

And don't ask me about the Mathematics! I am not enamored with Math but I couldn't tell my KiDS that, lest they dislike Math, too. So I pretend that Math excites me. I even have a spiel that goes, "Your Papa finished Architecture and your Mama finished Economics, both math-intensive courses so you are genetically predisposed to Math. It is not hard." Yup! I am just waiting for lightning to strike me, night after night of reviewing fractions, multiplication and division...without a calculator.

Motherhood really isn't just vetting our kids' viewing choices, or reading children's literature before passing it on to them. We have to learn along with them, too. I remember approaching Diego's teacher to teach me finger math when he was Prep so I could check if he was doing it correctly. Our stock knowledge that tells us Pluto is a planet is insufficient. If we want our kids to excel in school, we have to go back to school, too. Ahhh...the things we do to raise our childen well.