Homeschool fails ... share them here

[aggieamy]

It's been awhile since we've had a thread of these and I figured it was about time.

 

I'll go first:

 

Today DD was sitting in the backseat reading a book while I was driving to the store. 

 

"Ooh.  How cool there's a map in the book!"

 

She turns to book sideways.

 

"It's the UK!"  Pause  "No.  It's the United States and Canada.  No.  Wait.  It's the world.  It's a world map."

 

:huh:

 

Anyone have a geography program to recommend.  My unschooling approach to geography of just doing puzzles and games with maps on them isn't working!  :laugh:

[Mrs Mungo]

True story: my girls acquired most of their geography knowledge by playing an online paper doll game. They have to play games to earn money to buy clothes and stuff for the dolls.

[Mommy22alyns]

I swear my girls learn and remember things from cartoons or overhearing DH and I talk (not even to them!) better than they learn when I TEACH them.  They'll remember great animal facts and I'll be all proud until they tell me that they remember it from Wild Kratts or Magic School Bus.   :glare:   Another case in point:  Rebecca knew what a trip to Dr. Andrews portends for a baseball player and I've never said a direct word to her about it.

 

Sigh.

[aggieamy]

True story: my girls acquired most of their geography knowledge by playing an online paper doll game. They have to play games to earn money to buy clothes and stuff for the dolls.

 

Please link. 

 

DD loves paper dolls and would love an online game of them.  She slightly redeemed herself today by asking what happened Catherine of Aragon.  I was a little surprised because we've never covered any English history other than what she's picked up in Horrible Histories.  She mentioned that in her dresses of the Medieval time coloring book it talks about Anne Boleyn being beheaded but she didn't know about Catherine. 

[NASDAQ]

My kid asked another parent at the home schooling coop how to spell her name.

 

SHE'S SEVEN.

[T'smom]

So many people on here say that they only do school as much as the child wants in K. Well, if I did that, my ds would never learn to read. The other day, less than 15 minutes after lunch, we sat down to do a lesson. He did the first couple lines fine and then he said "I'm hungry." I told him he could have a snack as soon as we finished. He wailed that there was no way he could read while he was starving. I told him I would wit until he was ready and surfed the Internet while he wailed about starving to death for almost an hour. It was ridiculous.

[bobbeym]

My 15 year old asked me last night how to spell "during."   Maybe we do need to find a spelling program. :glare:

[ThisIsTheDay]

When we began hsing, I taught world history and American history that first year.  When my dd asked, "Were they making mummies in Egypt when Abraham Lincoln was alive?" I knew I had to switch curriculum.  That's how I ended up with SOTW.

[Sara in AZ]

I swear my girls learn and remember things from cartoons or overhearing DH and I talk (not even to them!) better than they learn when I TEACH them. They'll remember great animal facts and I'll be all proud until they tell me that they remember it from Wild Kratts or Magic School Bus. :glare: Another case in point: Rebecca knew what a trip to Dr. Andrews portends for a baseball player and I've never said a direct word to her about it.

 

Sigh.

Seriously, I'm always bummed when I discover the cool things my kids know don't come from me. Wildcrats is a big contributed in our house, too.

[quark]

Yesterday I found a sopping wet, falling apart but obviously very clean bookmark (made of paper) drying off on my dish drying mat.

Asked DS10. Apparently it fell into the dog's bed and he washed it with soap to avoid possible contaminants. :huh:

[AK_Mom4]

We were discussing recent legalization of various things at the dinner table the other night.  DD12 asked "What's marijuana?"

 

Not sure if that's a homeschool fail or a homeschool success there......

[NASDAQ]

Oh, and we decided to do a bit of geography when it was revealed that my child thought that New York was the country adjoining Canada, and that one could reach it by boat.

[abacus2]

My 9 year old daughter was asked one day where she goes to school. She said, "Oh, we don't go to school." I prompted her to provide more information than that.  :glare:

[happymomofboys]

My kid asked another parent at the home schooling coop how to spell her name.

 

SHE'S SEVEN.

 

My 6th grader still misspells his name when he's in a hurry.   :001_rolleyes:  It's my fault for giving him a name with 9 letters.

[Amber in SJ]

When my dd was in the 3rd grade she read the name of the main public library that we had taken the light rail to visit rather than our little branch.

 

"Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library"

 

I asked her if she knew who that was and she replied,

 

"Didn't he write Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom....?"

 

Oooops.

 

Amber in SJ

 

"I have a dream.....that someday there will be room at the top of the coconut tree for all God's letters...."

 

 

[Amber in SJ]

and in a particularly spiteful mood my then 15yo dd announced that she learned more Spanish from "Dora the Explorer," than she did from me.  I pointed out that was really more of a reflection of her than on me.

 

Amber in SJ

[Amber in SJ]

This was also the child who decided that because in England they speak English and in Spain they speak Spanish therefore in Germany they must speak Germish.  This amazing declaration came in the 7th grade when we were choosing to continue with her current schedule of foreign language or if she would like to branch out.  She said she wanted to try Germish & I said,  "You want to learn what?" 

 

Amber in SJ

[Amber in SJ]

Oh!  One more and then I will stop, I promise.  This same dd (who was 18 at the time)  walked in to the living room where everyone else was avidly watching Women's Gymnastics at the London Olympics.  After a moment she said,

 

"Why are all the girls on the American team named Lisa?"

 

We all looked at her dumbfounded until I realized she was looking at the jackets that said USA on the back and thought the U was an oddly shaped L & I.

 

Amber in SJ

[Guest]

We were at the doctor the other day and they asked my daughter if she knew her teacher yet or knew her teacher's name yet. She said no. Nice.

[WTMCassandra]

My children only know the concepts of "drag race" and "competition ladder" in the context of model rocketry. They had no clue that these concepts anywhere else until I told them they are sports-related.

 

Not sure if that's a homeschool fail or a geek-no-sports-family fail.

[Garga]

Today someone told about a writing class she taught, "Out of 14 students, 12 of them were boys." My ds8 said, "So three of them were girls, then." We asked hIm to think it over, but he just couldn't get it.

[Forget-Me-Not]

My 10 yo son told his younger sister that Kentucky Fried Chicken is so delicious they named a state after it.

[Melissa in Australia]

MY 9 (almost 10) tells everyone that he cannot read. Unfortunately he really believes it. When I tell him each day that he is reading great ( he reads aloud to me) he tells me that isn't reading it is only guessing.

[ChristyB in TN]

My 14 year old recently disclosed that he doesn't know the order of the months. :( we never really did that calendar thing every day. It would be hilarious to start now!

[ktgrok]

This was also the child who decided that because in England they speak English and in Spain they speak Spanish therefore in Germany they must speak Germish.  This amazing declaration came in the 7th grade when we were choosing to continue with her current schedule of foreign language or if she would like to branch out.  She said she wanted to try Germish & I said,  "You want to learn what?" 

 

Amber in SJ

I think their brains fall out in 7th grade. My son, also in 7th, was discussing foreign language with me, I forget why. I think I was threatening to send him to Mexico to learn Spanish. Anyway, he says that if I'm going to send him somewhere to learn a language he'd rather go somewhere cool, like Australia. I almost crashed the car. He was disappointed to learn that they speak English in Australia, not Australian. Sigh.

[Carrie12345]

This is more of a "sheltered" incident, I think, than academic, and I hope it doesn't offend anyone, but here it goes!

 

The other day, my 10yodd was being a pill during chores. I said "Oh, just clean the h*!! up!" She sarcastically asked, "But how would I get up there?" UP! She thought h*!! was UP!!!

(Clearly we are not religious.)

[Melissa in Australia]

I think their brains fall out in 7th grade. My son, also in 7th, was discussing foreign language with me, I forget why. I think I was threatening to send him to Mexico to learn Spanish. Anyway, he says that if I'm going to send him somewhere to learn a language he'd rather go somewhere cool, like Australia. I almost crashed the car. He was disappointed to learn that they speak English in Australia, not Australian. Sigh.

Sure we speak Australian here, completely different to American. :laugh:

[Mommyfaithe]

Oh, don't get me started....ok, just one: my oldest child is an avid reader. During high school, she was on a middle ages kick...Three Musketeers etc.

 

One day I came home and my bi fold door in my kitchen was broken. I asked her what happened, and she stated that Mr. ****** was over and he was ejaculating all over the kitchen!

 

Dh and I picked our jaws off the floor and then had to be resuscitated from laughter. She thought ( at 16) that ejaculate meant to scream and wave your arms. Ooooohhhhhkay. That was a fun explanation!

 

Geographically, my kids are horribly challenged, even though we study maps with ALL of our history EVERY SINGLE YEAR!!!!

 

 

Oh, and my kids can read really well, but are pronunciationally challenged! It can be embarrassing, but we now call it speaking homeschool. LOL

 

Faithe

[ThisIsTheDay]

My 13yods made a comment about Jane Austen being British.  I was so impressed that he'd picked this up (we've never read Jane Austen.)

 

Then he told me he learned it on Phineas & Ferb.

 

When dd read Dickens' A Christmas Carol several years ago, ds knew all of the answers to her discussion questions.  He'd already seen the Mickey Mouse version, which mirrored the real book.

[ktgrok]

Sure we speak Australian here, completely different to American. :laugh:

Lol, that was I think my response...man!

[kwg]

ds10: Hey mom, it turns out birds are their own group.  They are not mammals or reptiles or anything.

[zoobie]

I swear my girls learn and remember things from cartoons or overhearing DH and I talk (not even to them!) better than they learn when I TEACH them. They'll remember great animal facts and I'll be all proud until they tell me that they remember it from Wild Kratts or Magic School Bus. :glare: Another case in point: Rebecca knew what a trip to Dr. Andrews portends for a baseball player and I've never said a direct word to her about it.

 

Sigh.

I know! Every time we ask where they learned something, it was always "Ruff Ruffman" or some show. Why pay for school when you just need cable?

[NicAnn]

Yep for us it's BrainPop. Darn kid learns more from the 5 minutes she watches than from anything else!

 

My 1st grader never tells adults she's homeschooled. They all ask "oh are you going to be in kindergarten/1st/school next year". And she just says yes to whatever they say.

[K&Rs Mom]

 

My younger once asked me to translate her spelling words into English.  I :huh: at her, until she pointed out that the list was in cursive.  Then I  :lol:  because she was halfway through this spelling book, every list had been in cursive, and she had been able to write in cursive for about two years already.  But somehow on this day it was suddenly a foreign language.  :tongue_smilie: 

[jhschool]

Not being snarky, it's just bugging me.

 

The Three Musketeers is not Middle Ages; it's set in the 17th century.

 

It'll bug me if I don't post, so please don't flame.

[mommymonster]

We had a tough patch in homeschooling this spring.

 

My husband, who aspires to be the peace-maker, asks Oldest DS:  "What is your favorite thing about history?"

DS responds: "Liberty Kids!"  

DH plunges ahead with, "Well, what is your favorite thing about science?"

DS responds: "Wild Kratts."

DH, not knowing when he's beat, asks in desperation, "OK, who is your **favorite** teacher?"

DS responds: "Carmen Sandiego!"

 

I then decided to stop trying to teach my kid ... and made a paper dinosaur ($1 for a book of 10 of them at Michael's). DS named it "Dino-Mike," and *Dino-Mike* taught school for the rest of the year. Per DS, "Dino-Mike is my best friend. And the best teacher ever."   

 

 

 

 

[Moxie]

For YEARS, my now 7yo, when asked anything about school, would respond with, "We don't take school". As in, we take gymnastics, swimming, etc., just not school.

[thessa516]

My DS asked me if it was September, OCTOBER, November, or September, November, then October.

 

He's 17.

 

I made him sing the Months of the Year song to me. You know, the one I taught him in Kindergarten.  :lol:

[Baseball mom]

We were at the doctor the other day and they asked my daughter if she knew her teacher yet or knew her teacher's name yet. She said no. Nice.

:rofl:  :smilielol5:

 

Laughing out loud at this thread (because I identify so well).  Ds walks in the room & asks what's so funny.  Told him he wouldn't understand.

[Ellie]

It's been awhile since we've had a thread of these and I figured it was about time.

 

I'll go first:

 

Today DD was sitting in the backseat reading a book while I was driving to the store. 

 

"Ooh.  How cool there's a map in the book!"

 

She turns to book sideways.

 

"It's the UK!"  Pause  "No.  It's the United States and Canada.  No.  Wait.  It's the world.  It's a world map."

 

:huh:

 

Anyone have a geography program to recommend.  My unschooling approach to geography of just doing puzzles and games with maps on them isn't working!  :laugh:

 

:laugh:

 

I learned the location of all the states by messing with a preschool puzzle when I was, well, pre-school age. My grandmother gave me the puzzle and didn't say anything about it. I put it together enough times that I know the states by their shapes. :-)

 

I put big maps (U.S. and world) on the wall in our dining room, and referred to them casually while we were eating or otherwise hanging out. The U.K.'s interest in the Falkland Islands was fodder for a number of conversations, beginning with amazement that the U.K. cared so much about a small group of islands way the heck over in South America.

 

Even unschooling parents can be a little more, um, purposeful in their methods, lol.

 

I used the Kathy Troxel geography songs with my little one-room, multi-grade school. You could *totally* unschool geography just by playing the CD in the car while doing errands. And the dc might enjoy coloring the maps in the accompanying workbook. I still go through all the songs in my head when I hear a news report. :-)

 

My biggest fail was the year I decided to Every Day Just Like School, with a book of some kind for every.single.subject. It was our fifth year. We burned out by Thanksgiving; I put the books away and didn't take them out until the next fall. Seriously. Oh, and that was the Winston Grammar year.  :ack2:  Then we happily did KONOS for the next two years.

 

[zimom]

My kid asked another parent at the home schooling coop how to spell her name.

 

SHE'S SEVEN.

My now 21 y.o. son called me one day when he was 17 because he needed to know how to spell MY name. It is a common name, with typically three spellings, but he is my son, how many times has he seen me write it over his life?? For the record, he attended and graduated with honors from a very competitive private school.

[Laura Corin]

Not being snarky, it's just bugging me.

 

The Three Musketeers is not Middle Ages; it's set in the 17th century.

 

It'll bug me if I don't post, so please don't flame.

 

Okay, I'll join in.  Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn aren't Middle Ages either: 16th Century as adults.

 

L

[LibraryLover]

Okay, I'll join in.  Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn aren't Middle Ages either: 16th Century as adults.

 

L

 

LOL  We are so picky here, aren't we?  Technically, High Middle Ages does end at 1500.

 

 

 

 

[Laura Corin]

LOL  We are so picky here, aren't we? 

 

Technically, High Middle Ages ends at 1500.

 

 

Nothing if not picky.

 

Before I posted, I did a bit of Googling and the date for the end of the middle ages seemed to be set between 1400 and 1500, depending on source.  I had previously been taught that the middle ages ended with the Renaissance, so probably at a different date in each European country.  I don't think that anyone would argue against Henry VIII's court being Renaissance, however many retro jousts he staged.

 

L

[LibraryLover]

k it talks about Anne Boleyn being beheaded but she didn't know about Catherine. 

 

This will help: 

 

 

:)  Click Henry's 6 Wives

[EKS]

I'm not sure if this is a homeschooling fail or just a parenting fail, but my older son thought his middle name was Oscar until he was 14yo.  His middle name is not Oscar. 

[bobbeym]

LOL  We are so picky here, aren't we?  Technically, High Middle Ages does end at 1500.

 

That said, I asked my youngest the other day when the American Civil War (which we have done to death it seems) began, and she said, "I know it started before WWI."   I really wanted to cry. A few minutes later she looked up from her third reading of Catching Fire and shouted, " 1861!! 1861! See?? I was right, it was before WWI." :glare:

 

I am driving myself nuts thinking about gaps, fails etc. Perceived or real.   I really hate hsing right now. lol So much pressure.

 

:rofl:    I've come to expect answers like this from my boys.

 

I wish I could remember the exact question and answer, but it was from early in DS' earth science class last year.  His answer didn't match the textbook's answer, but it was so completely out of the box, obnoxiously accurate that I cracked up laughing over it and told DH there was no possible way I could mark that wrong.  I might have even given DS bonus points.   I also learned that day that things like this are why DH hates grading papers.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is a homeschooling fail or just a parenting fail, but my older son thought his middle name was Oscar until he was 14yo.  His middle name is not Oscar. 

 

Should we ask why he thought his middle name was Oscar?

 

Several years ago, DH had managed to convince both boys that I never really turned an age other than 29.  I think I was about 35 before they realized the truth.

[HappyLady]

This thread is definitely making me feel better about things! My DD is 5.5 and we're not even technically homeschooling yet. Some of the things she doesn't know just amazes me. I told her to go in the backyard and get something and she asked where the backyard was. We play in it everyday. Then I told her to get something that was in the bathroom sink and she asked me what a sink was.

[quark]

My DS asked me if it was September, OCTOBER, November, or September, November, then October.

 

He's 17.

 

I made him sing the Months of the Year song to me. You know, the one I taught him in Kindergarten.  :lol:

 

Yeah, we do that too! I'm so glad I thought him that song! :)

[Mom23Boys]

We saw a Border Patrol truck in front of our neighborhood and my youngest (6) asked why that truck was here.

 

My 2nd oldest (9) said he knew why:

 

"Because before you come into our country, you have to fill out lots of paperwork and stuff, unless you are born here.  Some people sneak into the country and the Border Patrol looks for them.  They are probably looking for people from Mississippi who snuck into Louisiana."

 

Yeah, Louisiana isn't a country... 

 

 

That same child (the 9 year old) and I had this conversation the other day:

 

Me: We are eating at Nana's tonight.

 

Him: Oh yeah, isn't that for Aunt Dana's birthday?

 

Me: Yes, why don't y'all make her a card or something.

 

Him: Oh, is Aunt Dana going to be there too?

 

Me: Seriously???

 

He also once answered the question, "Where are the Phoenicians from?" with Idaho.