Sickness. In many forms.

So it seems the kids are sick again. I took them to a meeting where there would be other children, and undoubtedly someone there thought it was a good idea to attend the meeting with a sick kid, instead of staying home. So they came, and now my two are sick as well. Can't everyone just simply quit spreading pestilence? STAY HOME. I can't image that there's anything so incredible you have to offer a meeting that it's worth infecting the rest of us. C'mon, folks, this is basic manners. Even workplaces follow these rules. 

So now there's much sniffing and sneezing and watery eyes and little red noses. Sigh. 

We were supposed to go to the Zoo next week to help in earning a Wildlife Pin for Scouts, and apparently, despite my call-ahead to the zoo for all of this, when the Den Leader called up they rejected him. Sad Face! Especially since I explained our situation. In a nutshell, they felt that they didn't want to try to accommodate a bunch of over-achieving Tiger Scouts. I find this ridiculous, since when I called they said there was "plenty" of space left for the date in question. (In truth, we were probably the only sign-ups and they didn't feel like running the program.) That's OK, I'm looking at other options, including a rafting/kayaking company that's willing to take us on a kayaking trip. No idea on costs, I'll have to run it by the Den to get a good feel on the level of interest. 

So since we don't have that, we do have a deal this weekend put on the Dept of Nat. Resources. Of course since the kids are sick, they shouldn't go. :-( (See, people, you're really putting a kibosh on all our plans!) They're supposed to be doing a lot of animal exhibits and aquariums & such...just the kind of thing we'd be likely to attend. I figured that much of it could be applied towards the Scout Wildlife Belt Loop...I started to talk to David about this tonight. We discussed what a "natural resource" is, and what "endangered" and "extinct" mean. He already knew "extinct." I told him part of the requirements were to pick an endangered species and--

"Bald eagles! Are they endangered?"

Uh...I think so. At least, they were. (Actually they were delisted just last year I find.)

"I want to pick bald eagles!" 

"I guess you can do that. We'll have to check."

"Did you know that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey? For the United States' bird?"

"Yes, he did, didn't he?"

"Who wanted the bald eagle? Was it Thomas Jefferson?"

"Uh...I'm not sure."

"Or was it...oh, what's his name? Uh...oh! George Washington?"

"I...have no idea. They certainly all lived in the same time period and they all had a big hand in the founding of the country, but I don't know who wanted the bald eagle."

From there we went on to discuss fun stuff like food chains, bedrock and water tables. Then it was time for bed. 

Lauren is so desperate to "do school" that she's taken to writing letters on a Magna-Doodle, and bringing it to me and asking, "What does this say?" Scarily enough, she brought me one which read:

B   O    B

O   F   T

My translation of "Bob Oft" was met with a wrinkled nose. "It's Boba Fett," she pouted, citing one of David's favorite Star Wars characters. Her handwriting, I should mention, knocks David's right out of the water, too, and I haven't been working on it with her. 

Today I sat down with her with the magnetic letter tile kit. She's got all the capital letters with the possible exception of "L-M-N-O," which is kinda obvious for a kid her age. We went through that and I started plunking down lowercase letters and asking her if she knew what each one was called and if she could match it up with the uppercase letter. She did very well, only had trouble with  h, q, b and d. 

For David we did sound blends of /lk/ and /ct/, and used a "congratulation cylinder" to measure volume. (Hey, close enough to "graduated cylinder" for him!) He was getting more and more bogged down with his cold, so we packed it up when it became apparent that he was turning glassy-eyed, red-nosed and kind of pink in the cheeks. I dosed him with a decongestant and had him sit still and turn his brain off. Ditto with Lauren. 

Speaking of such things, there was an interesting article in the New York Times:

U.S. Students Achieve Mixed Results on Writing Test
By SAM DILLON

About a third of the nation’s eighth-grade students, and roughly a quarter of its high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to nationwide test results released Thursday.

That proportion of students demonstrating writing proficiency is about the same as in 2002, when a similar exam was last given.

But the results of the latest test, administered last year, also found modest increases in the skills of lower-performing students. Nearly 9 students in 10 can now demonstrate at least a basic achievement in writing, defined as partial mastery of the skills needed for proficient work.

As in the past, girls outperformed boys by far, most decisively at the eighth-grade level, where 41 percent of them achieved proficiency, compared with 20 percent of boys. The racial achievement gap narrowed slightly, with black and Hispanic students’ writing improving a bit more than did whites’.

The results for eighth graders, though not for seniors, were broken down by states, the top performers of which were New Jersey, where 56 percent of students scored at or above proficiency levels, and Connecticut, where the number was 53 percent. Nineteen states ranked above New York, where it was 31 percent.

That a third of the nation’s eighth graders can write with proficiency may not sound like much, but it is the best performance by eighth-grade students in any subject tested in the national assessment in the last three years. Only 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient on the 2006 history exam, for example.

Though some experts questioned whether the writing test, which requires students to compose only brief essays in a short time, was an accurate measure of their ability, officials of the government’s testing program said they were encouraged by the results.

“I am happy to report, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that the death of writing has been greatly exaggerated,” said Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher who is vice chairwoman of the board that oversees the testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card.”

The results were released at the Library of Congress in Washington. The host, James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, drew laughs when he expressed concern about “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought — the sentence,” as young Americans do most of their writing in disjointed prose composed in Internet chat rooms or in cellphone text messages.

“The sentence is the biggest casualty,” Mr. Billington said. “To what extent is students’ writing getting clearer?”

Ms. Avallone sought to allay his concern.

“I know that the sentence has not been put to rest as a unit of communication,” she said.

Ms. Avallone also said the difference in scores between girls and boys might result in part from lower literacy expectations for boys in the public schools.

“These days I seldom if ever hear the message that math and science do not matter for girls,” she said, “yet I do still encounter the myth that many boys won’t really need to write very much or very well once they leave school.”

The national writing test was given to 140,000 eighth graders and 28,000 12th graders selected to form a representative sample of all students nationwide in the two grades. Each student wrote two 25-minute essays intended to measure skills at writing to inform, persuade and tell stories.

Thirty-three percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficiency level, which the test designers defined as competency in carrying out challenging academic tasks. Eighty-eight percent scored at or above the basic level, up from 85 percent in 2002.

“These results pleased and encouraged me,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s 60 largest urban districts. “A lot of cities have introduced explicit writing programs. You go into urban schools and you see hallways lined with samples of student writing. Writing programs have gotten better.”

If Mr. Casserly was encouraged, some others were not, particularly in light of other indicators of Americans’ writing prowess. A survey of 120 corporations conducted by the College Board in 2003, for instance, concluded that a third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies, including many recent college graduates, wrote poorly.

“American students’ writing skills are deteriorating,” said Will Fitzhugh, founder of The Concord Review, a journal that features history research papers written by high school students.

Mr. Fitzhugh expressed skepticism that the national assessment accurately measured students’ overall writing skills, because, he said, it tested only their ability to write brief essays jotted out in half an hour.

“The only way to assess the kind of writing that students will have to do in college,” he said, “is to have them write a term paper, and then have somebody sit down and grade it. And nobody wants to do that, because it’s too costly.”

And did everyone get the little item about the third graders' plot to get revenge at a teacher? They were bringing knives to school: Knife, Handcuffs Found Among Kids Suspected In Plot To Hurt Teacher

And then there's this lovely tidbit, where a 7 year-old brought two loaded guns to school. 

File those under WTF. Apparently the only thing we're learning at school is how to imitate gangster videos. Oh! Speaking of which...a word of warning for those adults who think they're hip enough to actually participate in teen culture: You are SO WAY IN over your head. Case in point, a teacher who decided that engaging in popular dance moves would connect her to her students:

"Then at Christmas my son came home. My son is a 24 year old actor who's a whiz at pop culture. It's part of his business actually. I was very excited to show him how cool I am. Minutes after he got home, I started cranking.

He looked at me strangely. "Mother," he said. "Do you know what that song means?" Of course I did. I told him that "Soulja Boy" is a dance, and when we do it, we're "cranking that Soulja Boy." He laughed and then told me that there was no way he had the nerve to explain the real meaning to me. He suggested that I look it up on urbandictionary.com.

What I read was horrifying."

So very. Very. In over your head.