A soft-bodied marine animal without a backbone.
Slightly adjunct to last week’s post is that Toots had a jellyfish report due today. An oral report. Of facts she had to memorize. Accompanied by a poster board of pictures she drew to illustrate her supporting points. Points like jellyfish lifecycles and animal classification.
She is in kindergarten.
Actually, if I may be non-snarky for just a *brief* moment, I do like that she is challenged at school. I think it’s cool that she’s already learning how to write a thesis and stuff, but this oral report led to all kinds of sticky wickets. For instance…
How to explain to a six-year-old “asexual reproduction?” Or better, “sexual reproduction,” and that “fertilized eggs” aren’t chicken eggs covered with poop? Then there were words like “polyp,” which is a term I associate with cancerous colon growths, and “soft-bodied marine animal,” which just sounded weird. Like the word “moist.” Which to me, is just a gross word.
Better yet, The Rock and I kept disagreeing over what certain words meant, which only added to Toots’ confusion. Like “invertebrate.” A word I KNOW means “without a backbone,” but The Rock insisted it meant “without a skeleton.” Then the word “marine,” which is “from the ocean,” but someone insisted it was “from the water.” I swear, if Toots gets to college, it will all be thanks to me. (THIS IS AN INFLAMMATORY STATEMENT DESIGNED TO PUSH THE ROCK’S BUTTONS.) (BECAUSE THIS IS MY BLOG AND I CAN FLAP MY GUMS WITHOUT ANY BACKTALK.) (UNTIL TONIGHT, AFTER THE ROCK READS THIS AND I HEAR, “San Diego Mommason McLiar Diane TeasyPants!” YELLED FROM THE UPSTAIRS OFFICE.) (THEN THE INFLAMMATORY STATEMENT WILL PROBABLY BE REDACTED.)
Where was I?
Oh yeah, did you know that jellyfish are the world’s largest plankton? And who better to represent a “plankton,” then the one-celled organism from SpongeBob? That’s what Toots thought too, so she faithfully rendered the cartoon onto her poster board to illustrate that interesting jellyfish-plankton fact.
I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of time before Toot’s teacher asks me to remove myself from involvement in my daughter’s learning process.
All that in kindergarten?! I’m speechless! Right now, I’m trying to psych myself up to get my 7th grader up here to help him with making a 3D model of a virus, and we’re already stressed out. If this process had started when he was 5, I’d be crazy by now!
Kindergarten is NOT what it used to be! Make sure that you don’t teach your daughter to call a diamond shape a “diamond.” It is refered to as a “rhombus.” I stood corrected by my son’s Kinder teacher and felt like a complete dumbass.
Wow, at this rate she’ll be done with college by 13.
Watch out, Deb. Next week she’ll have to do a PowerPoint presentation and complete notecards for her research citations.
Moist is okay if used to describe cake—other than that, so with you–bad word.
By the way, I stopped “helping” my kids around 4th grade. My last hurrah was long division and since they do that in first grade now, I was rendered useless a long time ago…
You think you’re causing trouble for Toots? Try being the mom who donated an Adam Lambert CD for the school’s Literature Fair Lottery.
Where in the F does she go to school?? My son’s at the Language Academy, so while he’s not yet dissecting jellyfish, I guess it’s pretty crazy that he now balks when I try to correct his pronunciation in French. “I’ve studied French longer than you!” I insist. “Yea but I learn French faster,” he retorts.
Touche.
Rock on, Plankton!
Jellyfish are cool to look at, but they’re icky to touch.
As for the amount of work our children have, it’s great to challenge the kids, but what about letting them learn to love learning first?
Should we warn MIT that you two are coming in about 12 years? Heh.
I do love jellyfish ever since I watched a documentary about the oceans and saw a bunch of nontoxic ones in a closed off sea—they are lovely.
Generally stingy, but lovely.