Quaker blogger and writer Eileen Flanigan has a blog post up that is mostly about finding time to write amid the back-to-school hustle and bustle. But tucked in there is a thought or two about using up old school supplies rather than buying all new ones each and every year. As homeschoolers, there is less pressure on us to get all new things in the fall (and we don't need many folders, etc. as there is no daily transport from one place to another required for most of their paperwork.) Pencils, on the other hand, have become an issue. Ethan (almost 2) has for some time now been fond of biting the erasers off pencils. He doesn't eat them, just bites them off, sucks on them for a few minutes, then spits them onto the carpet. Pink block erasers are strewn about the house but never seem to be handy when we need them, and end-cap erasers are a choking hazard for Ethan, so I've bought more new pencils in the last 9 months than in the previous 9 years! Environmentally unfriendly as it may be, it's actually kind of amusing when we step back and observe ourselves:
"Mommy!! Ethan's got a pencil with an eraser!"
"Quick, trade him for a bitten one!"
"He doesn't want it! I can't get it away from him!"
"Be careful yanking it away; if he lets go, you'll stab yourself in the face."
"But he won't let go! Arrgh! He bit it! Now I can't do my math!"
"Nice try. Just get a new pencil. I sharpened a bunch of them the other day."
Someday when Ethan gets older, he's going to wonder why we have 100 pencils in the house but NONE with an eraser. We can't wait to tell him...
Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
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I received my membership card from the Philadelphia Museum of Art today.
The front of it has an excerpt from a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Circles
in ...
2 years ago
5 comments:
Oh, this made me laugh.
LOL me too! The dialog is just too funny...esp on it's own. If one didn't know the whole story...
:)
Sounds familiar! Crazy to run into you at the beach the other day, lovely as well. We'll be thinking of Ethan and the other birth class babies when Pete turns 2 this Sunday.
Very cute! I love the aspect of homeschooling that we basically purchase supplies when we need them. We normally do something fun to "mark" the school year beginning again, but not having the pressure to keep up that way and with clothing is another part of the lifestyle that just suits us too.
Oh my that is so funny. Thanks for the laugh this morning. I even read this to the kids this morning and they all laughed. We kind of have the opposite situation here where the school age kids somehow use up the erasers on the pencils and then the baby walks around collecting and hiding the big pink block erasers. We never have an eraser when we need one.
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