Thimbles, Needles, Aprons, and All Other Strange Things

Ian is in a great, new school. The staff at his special education kindergarten is working very hard to improve his speech. I'm so happy with the program that I'm rethinking my prior commitment to inclusion. I just had a meeting with his school, because he has already met all of his yearly goals. (Thanks for the link, Dave. I'll write a post about it next week.)

His teachers often use worksheets for reading and speech. Ian is supposed to identify an object and explain what that object is used for. The problem is that the worksheets assume that kids come in contact with a mom who's a good housekeeper. Someone who sews holes in their jeans, instead of tossing them out and buying a new pair. Someone who cooks nice meals and protects her clothes with an apron. Someone who regularly sweeps and mops the floor, instead of leaving it for the cleaning lady. Someone who irons shirts, instead of dropping them off at the drycleaner. Poor Ian doesn't have one of those moms.

As his therapists drill Ian with new words and phrases, he's coming across completely alien objects. Needles, thread, thimbles, mops, irons, aprons, dusters. What is that weird shit?

Objects that Ian is familiar with: takeout menus, wine bottles, cell phones, Blackberries, computers, scanners, color-coded calendars, remotes, drive through windows, and game systems.   

Comments

[anonymous]

So true!

[Teresa]

Part of me is a little envious. My kids have been wielding a mop since they were little, everyone has chores. No way in hell I could maintain everything on my own and equally no way in hell I could afford for someone else to do it. There are nights I long for a take-out menu to be what we argue over rather than who gets to load the dishwasher...

[WendyW]

HAHAHA!!! I love it. Yeah, my kids don't have that mom, either.

[Laura GP]

This made me laugh with recognition. I was working with my kindergartner on a sorting task for school the other day, in which she was to identify which one of many objects is not found in a garden. Since we don't do much gardening, this was a challenging task for her. Most challenging, though, was getting her mind around the idea that spiders *are* found in gardens since, in our universe, they're really only found in our house.

[laura]

Yeah, those worksheet regularly use images of a hoe. My kids have never seen one of those before.

And what's with all the farm crap in children's books? My kids know cities and suburbs. Where are the apartment buildings and subways? Where are the SUVs and malls? Why is my kid supposed to know what kind of animals live on a farm?

And why do all pictures of telephones have rotary dials and curly wires? And go "ring ring"?

[Amy P]

For that matter, why isn't it a large, specialized contemporary farm, rather than a subsistence or hobby farmette with one horse, two cows, three pigs, and five chickens?

[Tex]

My daughter recently had a math word problem that asked her to calculate how many “records” Jim had in his music collection.

[Amy P]

I'm somewhere in the middle. We own all these exotic objects, but they don't all get used much: thimbles (no), needle and thread (yes, for popped buttons on adult clothes--kiddie clothes often aren't worth it), apron (yes--darned useful for baking, art projects, and eating spaghetti), mop (we've gone over to Swiffering, plus we have cleaners), duster (cleaners do 95% of dusting), iron (haven't touched it for years--we used to use a dry cleaner, but after moving to Texas we've started switching over to no-iron shirts--I should have done that years ago--so much less hassle).

[bj]

I have to test these out on my kids. Aprons are ubiquitous in books, so I think they'd get that one. But I have no idea if they know what an iron is.

How much do they pick up from the ether, without ever having seen Mom or Dad with an iron, and how much do they not know?

My son asked me what a "soul" was yesterday. I tried to tell him it was the bottom of his foot. But he said that certainly didn't work with "Frosty, the Snowman, He's a jolly happy soul."

I'm intrigued to find out if he and his 6 yo sister know what an iron is.

It's so great that you're happy with Ian's school.

bj

[Ancarett]

Oh, gracious. These are interesting anachronisms. My kids are pretty familiar with my sewing basket, but I never use a thimble. They rarely see the iron since it lives in the laundry room. We do have quite a collection of aprons, but they're mostly worn during art projects!

As for why all these pictures and problems are so dated, since when have the schools had the money to acquire new materials mentioning CDs and showing cordless phones?

[Amy P]

One of the sheets is clearly labeled as copyright 2004 by speechcorner.com, which looks like a cottage operation.

[jen]

I've had to explain to the kids the concept of developing photos. Like, at an actual store. It was a shocker to them.

But then again I have a 6-year-old who asked for an iPod for Christmas. So there you go!

[bj]

My six year old asked for a Kindle (for her birthday, coming up soon). She thought the idea of being able to have all her books at once was a great thing.

bj
PS: She isn't going to get one :-).

[timna]

My son did not know why there would be sheets hanging on strings outside.

[Allison]

I dunno. Sounds like you cook nice meals to me...

[Liz Ditz]

Just send the "not known at my house" worksheets back with that inscription.

Or make up some of your own.

[learner]

Regarding all the anachronistic farm imagery in kids books and songs, check out

http://www.themeatrix.com/

This is also all part of the corporate, test-oriented nature of education. If you think these things are a challenge for yuppie suburban kids, think of how much harder it is for children of color in the city.

Clearly even new education materials tend to be getting recycled over and over again. I teach college, and I know how hard it is to balance efficiency of re-using material from year to year without getting laugh-ably out of date.

But I should note that there is a difference between "new" and "relevant" ... next semester some of my students will think I'm hopelessly antiquated because I'm still talking about An Inconvenient Truth but I know that we still need to focus on this topic.

[ALB]

Reminds me of "what sound does the cow/chicken/pig make?" with an answer that varies by what language you speak.

"What sound does the cell phone make?" Whose phone and who's calling?

"What sounds does the doorbell make?" Bzzz; brrr-iinng; none-it rings the phone.

"What sound does the car make?" Channel the expert car-sound imitators at CarTalk.

[Thread is used to tie the legs of the Thanksgiving turkey together. And sometimes useful for doing hair.]

[carosgram]

I can certainly understand the problems with today's lifestyles and the vocabulary content of many of those 'worksheets'. However one of the problems many children are experiencing in developing reading comprehension is that even after they decode and pronounce a word, they don't have a clue to what it means. By giving children a rich background of experiences and vocabulary, you will be helping your child become a better reader and able to understand social studies content. Being able to understand literary works written in different time periods is invaluable both academically and socially. Good luck!

[dave.s.]

you like links, I give you links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120301954.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120302225.html

problem: the pregnant girls, they are not going off to hide their shame anymore, and it's been a while. so no Florence Crittendon homes going surplus.

[Crimson Wife]

Too funny! While my 5-yr-old would know things like irons, mops, aprons, etc. she did miss the word "newspaper" on the vocabulary section of the WPPSI IQ test. DH and I get all our news either online, on cable news channels, or via NPR. So a traditional newspaper is not something that's part of her day-to-day environment...