Sean is eating!! And Maggie has too much homework.

As we all know, Sean has never really took a bottle of EBM (expressed breast milk) very well. Every day I pump, bring the bottle to daycare, only to dump it out at the end of the day after Sean, maybe takes 1/2 an ounce. A few times in October he drank an entire bottle and promptly grew a bunch. Well, it looks like we are hitting a growth spurt again. Sean actually drank 4 oz Monday and Tuesday, and 6 oz today. Woo hoo! He also ate an entire jar of baby food each day. Yay Sean! Oh... and Maggie fed him half a jar of baby food at dinner tonight also. I think Sean would have eaten more, but I wanted him to nurse later so I wouldn't let him have the whole jar. He is happily sleeping now with a nice full belly. :)

Maggie had early release from Kindergarten today. Nancy picked her up from school and took her to the Southwest Museum in Mesa. I have never been, but it has dinosaurs, fossils, native american artifacts, and panning for "real gold", as Maggie puts it. She came home with all sorts of new facts about how a dinosaurs brain is smaller than her brain and why the native american made baskets. I think she really had a great time. I'm glad because the past couple of days have been hard for her. Finally, a good day.

Sooooo...math homework has started in Kindergarten for Maggie. Every day she comes home with a worksheet, adding 1 + 2, and such. Its much too abstract for her, and I don't see how she is supposed to do it alone. I've been helping her use nuts to represent the problems so she can count them up. This takes us anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes. Plus she has 10 minutes of reading homework also. Argh!!! I HATE HOMEWORK!!! So far, Maggie is ok with it. But I feel it is too much and have said so to the teacher. She said homework is mandated by the district. Guess I need to put my complaint in there. Maggie is in full day Kindergarten. Not half-day like most places. Can't she do this at school? WHat the heck!?

As you can tell, I am completely against homework for young kids. Homework has been shown to make NO difference in a childs success in school up to grade 5. If Maggie doesn't do her homework, she will miss recess. And as research, and common sense, clearly shows, a student NEEDS physical activity in order to focus. At Maggie's school, PE is already only once a week, and they have only one recess, 45 minutes long. So a kid who misses recess is basically going to turn into a sloth. I could go on for days...but probably no one is reading this now...