The boy loves cartoons.

What’s new? I tried to cut a deal:

If you want to watch cartoons then you need to listen and do a few exercises.

Exercise 1.

Tools needed favorite cartoon, spiral notebook, pencil Blue’s Clues Word Book and BIG big boys’ ears.

Directions

Listen to the characters talking

Write down 15 words that you recognize from them talking to each other.

If you cannot spell the word- find it in your Blues Clues Book.

Well of course my son threw a tantrum and we had to make telephone calls to New York.

I even pulled up the Jet Blue possible flights to NYC

In the end he decided to give the exercise a try rather than go visit Grandpa in NYC.

He wrote down these words

1. Blue, 2. lemonade 3. table 4. ice cream 5. bird 6. hot 7. TV 8.cheese 9.butter 10.ABC 11.clock 12.apple 13. crown 14.fish 15. guitar

Exercise 2

We talked about the words. everything was written well with all the letters facing the correct way.

I explained that this is a word game to help ‘tune up’ ears. Get use to seeing words written down that are often spoken. Understand the value of a word book.

Now I classified the words. He was told to find three other words in his word book that were in the same category.

The categories are in bold what he wrote is in plain text.

Colors blue yellow green red

Drinks lemonade cocoa juice milk

Furniture table bed chair cushion

Animals bird kangaroo mouse dog

Food ice cream Pizza apple onions

Entertainment TV Scooter Swing

Clothes           crown       shorts      socks     shirt

Instruments

well as of this post he is not done – I am pleased with his morning work. It is almost worth the chest pain I felt fighting with him to get him to do it in the first place.

Welcome to my son’s 1st grade, first story baby book.

My goal is to encourage his exploration into the wonderful world of words.

Like the average spoiled American 7 year old, he would rather watch television and play video games than read a book or study vocabulary.

One evening, last week I reached my limit with my son’s rebellious behavior. Out of desperation I snatched his $100, purple, Little Tykes television out of the wall in his room and tossed it over our third floor balcony.

I’d given several warnings that if he didn’t start taking more time with his homework, and reading to himself- the television was getting taken away.

This blog is all about what happened next.

I figured I better keep a journal since my son’s school officials did not condone my actions.

Thursday morning while waiting with my infant daughter at Earwax Cafe for my car to get the brakes checked, I received a phone call from the (well meaning) School’s Social Worker and Principal.

Apparently my son had entered class upset. He cried when the teacher asked him to talk about his problem.

The funny thing is my son is an excellent oral speaker and gripping story teller.

Within minutes, he had the teacher, the Principal, Social Worker and a few other nosy busy bodies eating out of the palm of his hands.

According to my son, one of the busy bodies said: “Your Moms going down!”

There is more to the story. I admit that I tried to scare the daylights out of him to make him realize how important accepting education is to an African American boy.

During our 25minute drive to school that morning a man held a sign: HOMELESS HUNGRY HELP at the intersection of Kennedy Expressway and Diversy

I pointed out to my son that he could end up a beggar if he didn’t learn to read. I also offered to put him out of the car  to get started with  his begging career immediately.

Why wait until you are all grown up? If that’s the life hat you want to live, you can start right NOW!

As we passed the man, I told my son to take a hard look at his cold face, swollen fingers and imagine himself stuck like that in the middle of the street with cars whizzing by.

From the reaction of my son social worker- finally my words hit home.

I was told that my son started in crying in class and appeared traumatized by what I said to him.

Traumatized is a very strong word- however that is the word used by the Social worker to describe my son’s behavior.