Good grief! That’s the way the I’m taking this week’s Popinjay photo prompt, “grief.” I don’t know that I’d have a picture for a serious kind of grief anyway, but I know that it’s not where I’m going. Not today.

Today I’m going to show you a picture of something that causes me a lot of grief in our homeschool, because it frustrates me as a teacher, it annoys me while grading and I don’t understand it as a parent.

I DO realize those are lousy reasons to be grieved over my child’s work. On the other hand, I do want to teach my children to give their work their best effort, to be neat and tidy and have pride in their work. See? Those are all good reasons. ;0)

This is it, this is the source of my school day grief. (One of them, anyway.)

My 7yo scribbles on her work. All over it! It really makes math papers hard to grade, believe me. I don’t understand it. I wish I knew if it was because she’s not being challenged enough or if she gets bored or if it’s just because she needs more to do with her hands. It’s pretty hard to be busy with your hands AND write at the same time, maybe she needs a creative outlet. I don’t know. I don’t know!

Fortunately for my sake, she’s been trying very hard to keep her school work neat and tidy for the last week or so. I keep reminding her to do her best and she’s been turning in work that is much LESS grievous. I like to see this trend, but she’s doing it for me though. I still have no idea why she feels the need to do it in the first place — oh good grief!

For more Popinjay, visit Michelle!

Sunset:

Drama Queen took these pictures on my camera the other day at sunset/dusk. I added the vignettes. (And this in only about a fourth of all the pics she took. Like mother like daughter.) ;0)