Diffendoofer Day

My kids are in a mega-workbook phase. While it's weird for me, I am rolling with it because well, that's what "child led" means. We read the Seuss book "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!" and I explained to the kids that it was about homeschooling.

For those of you who haven't read it, it's about a group of children who attend Diffendoofer school, whoch hosts a wholly unusual curriculum of random activities, seeimingly without any academic merit. They just have fun all day.

Big Brother comes in and makes them all take a standardized test, which makes the principal freak out, because if they don't pass the kids will be sent to the other school-- an interesting description of public school follows. Their teacher explains that the children know far more than they think they know, and that the test will be simple. Not only do the kids ace the exam, they are floored with how little of their knowledge they had to use to do it.

I am not exactly sure how connected to this story my dd's recent affection for traditional worksheets is, but she's had a lot of fun using her grade-level's workbooks in math, science and social studies, and trouncing the pages. It's nice to watch her realize that she does indeed know a lot more than she thinks she does, and to muster her own faith in our little home education process.


On other fronts, D-baby was making huge strides in potty learning. We use the toilet with an inset, and a stool for him to climb up. He was using the potty every day for a little while to make his deposits, and was only having accidents on the carpet, and needing diapers to sleep.

In the past couple of weeks however, he's gone crazy. His molars have come in with a vengeance so he's had a personality change, and he's decided the toilet is the devil. Worse, he's been both refusing diapers--they're for babies-- AND using the toilet. He's been dropping loads and making fountains wherever he wants. This, needless to say, is a problem for my family. With the stress of no transportation combined with the stress of teething combined with the stress of spot cleaning NASTINESS off the carpet, my life has been suckage lately.

Nikirj brought her fully trained toddler over and I was hoping-- since they originally were on a par with this, together-- that he'd be re-inspired. Instead, when he saw toddlergirl climb up onto the toilet he FREAKED out, yelling at Nikirj, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ~N~ will fall innnnnnn! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Get her!"

Ah! So! "Did you fall in D-baby? Did you fall in without telling anyone?" He just burrowed into me at that point and wouldn't answer.

Yesterday, I bought him pullups (yes, I know. I probably hate them more than you do, and he has his own cloth underwear, but I am desperate) and made a huge deal about them. I also reintroduced the potty and explained that he could NOT fall in if he always used his inset. I said "You're a big boy to use the toilet, but you have a tiny butt. That's the only reason you use the inset. If you use the inset, you can't fall in, ok?"

I think that worked because now he's back on track.

Holy Moly, I sure hope so.