I Am Not Smarter Than a 3rd Grader

My sister-in-law left town and gave me another crack at being a homeschool sub for my two nieces Madi and Janelle.  I was relieved to know she hadn't revoked my substitute teaching privileges after my last attempts.  I always go into this serious assignment totally committed to being on my very best behavior.  Absolutely no shenanigans, all work, no play,  roll up my sleeves, put on a pair of "mom jeans", and get down to the serious business of homeschooling.

This time my resolve lasted about twenty minutes.  Quite frankly, when it comes to my nieces and nephews, I'm just not the stern    nun-wielding-a-ruler type.

What happened was that I opened this math book of Madi's and it put me in a silly mood...

 This is what I saw inside...

This "issued to" box on the inside cover of her textbook looks ordinary but let me break it down for you.  Danielle, the first person to be "issued" this new math book, she is the oldest of my nieces and nephews and the first child my sister-in-law homeschooled.  Sheralyn would be Danielle's younger sister, Tanner just younger than Sheralyn, and Madi the next child to follow.

I just started laughing that a bunch of homeschoolers found it necessary to fill this section of the book out, as if, by some chance, someone was to damage the book beyond repair which would requrie an extensive man-hunt for the culprit.  A Campus-wide search for the book vandal at the Shumway Home School.  (I think Tanner may have caught on to this since he didn't even bother to note the book's condition.)

After that silly discovery I completely lost my resolve to be serious. That's when I noticed that they needed a little PE help, so I add a few PE items down at the bottom for both days:

Next, I got to correct Janelle's 3rd grade math fact sheet.  Piece of cake.  Except I realized that I never did memorize and get ALL of my own math facts down pat.  This is when I sadly had to acknowledge that I am not smarter than a 3rd Grader.  I totally couldn't tell you from memory the answer to 7x7.  I always hated that one.  And, quite frankly, as a kid I just figured I'd never really NEED to have that one memorized for any serious upcoming life event--like being a homeschool substitute--boy was I wrong!  Poor Janelle was really counting on me to correct her paper because she really wanted to do a good job on it.  That's when I decided to come clean and just let her know I couldn't remember if her answer to 7x7 was right or not...

Next I helped them memorize the 13 Colonies.  Luckily, Janelle only had to memorize just 7 of them.  But Madi had to get all 13.  So I made up a couple of acronymic sentences to help them remember their states.  But we got a little goofy about it and I think it will definitely get me fired from my homeschool subbing job.

Janelle's sentence for her 7 states was:
Good Shumways Never Volunteer to Make Mormons Coffee.

Madi used that one, then for the last 6 states, we decided on:
Polish Danielle's Nails Now! Please! Now!

By the time we had all our states memorized I was exhausted.  How does my sister-in-law do it everyday?  That's when I got distracted.  I decided the girls could work on matching skills.  So I opened up my laptop and got into my photos and had them use the face recognition program in my iphoto program and sort out faces.

This was my kind of school work.  They get to practice matching, I get my computer updated, my yard weeded for PE, and NO MORE MATH PROBLEMS!

...And should I get in trouble for getting distracted from the real work, I'm just gonna tell my sister-in-law that you can't expect a substitute to stay on task when she's not smarter than even a third grader.