Keyboard free day.

I had several postings in mind over the last couple days. Unfortunately on Tuesday the boy wanted the computer and I grabbed my book and when I surfaced it was time for bed. I stayed home yesterday since I spent the entire previous day feeling like someone sandblasted the inside of my mouth and throat. Yesterday it was somewhat better but I decided I didn't need to be a hero. Strangely, though, the one thing I didn't do yesterday was turn on the computer.

I did manage the gym and I took the boy to school since he was running late and the man was antsy about getting to work. I came home, read a bit and then began feeling guilty about things undone. See it was chilly yesterday and the boy needed a jacket for the first time. He also wanted long pants and long sleeve shirts. I just bought some pants for him but they needed to be hemmed. And I didn't know what I have in the way of long sleeve shirts. So I started by hemming pants and checking the length of all the remaining pants in his closet. Then I started opening the zillion bags and boxes scattered in the sewing room from my sister's boys. There are tons of jeans but most of them do not fit my boy. I found a few to try when I can persuade him. Then I tried to find shirts. I'm not sure what the nephews wore, but the shirt selection was seriously insufficient. Definitely need shirts.

I looked at my watch and realized I had only 1 1/2 hours until I was scheduled to volunteer at the school. So I decided to remedy the shirt situation. I bought a $100 worth of boys shirts and pants to round things out a bit. There's still a ton to sort, shorten, box or try on but it's a start. The boy wore a pair of jeans today (now I just have to teach him to pull the darn things up so he doesn't trip all over them even shortened).

Volunteering at the school was cutting and gluing - my favorites! I got to listen in on the boy's health class, though the volunteer station is out of visual and hearing range of his regular class.

I got peeved on one topic, however. Our school has a large special education population. The county (state?feds?) require the least restrictive teaching environment. That means that we have large numbers of main streamed special needs kids. I watched them "participate" in a social studies lesson and it made me furious. The aide just sat reading a book while the special ed kids sat at a table staring into space and the other students zipped back and forth getting materials and doing their tasks. No one made any effort to include or engage the special kids at all. The work was pretty cool because it was about artifacts you would find on an archeological expedition. I can't help but think the special kids could have benefited from the lesson if the aide had done something. There were pictures couldn't they have talked about them? It was frustrating to see. Worst is I don't even know who to talk to about it.