A Science Test to Make Me Laugh

Sometimes you just gotta laugh. You know? I have to say that my son’s science test did just that for me. He is a hoot! I simply shook my head and laughed and laughed. His answers cut to the chase. They aren’t very wordy and what is worded is very simple and mostly misspelled.

How about this word: sikele. Any idea? If I didn’t have the words in front of it I wouldn’t have known either. The exact sentence was, and I quote exactly as written, punctuation and capitalization as is: “No because normaly wouldn’t it not Part of its life sikele” Yes. This is what it is like when you home school a specially gifted child, one gifted with dyslexia. They think differently these people. That is okay. Einstein thought differently. Edison did as well. Both were told they were stupid. Both didn’t do well in school. Thinking differently IS a gift. It is also a challenge for the teacher to grade the work of those thus gifted! You can cry and whine and wring your hands or you can look heavenward, thank God for your precious gift, and laugh. I chose the latter yesterday.

Cycle. The word he meant was cycle. Life cycle. Of course there are a few other words left out of his sentence, but in some weird, scary way I have gotten so used to his way of expressing himself that I knew exactly what he was trying to say and that he had truly grasped the concept. By the way, I don’t take off for misspelled words.

The one that made me laugh the hardest though was the answer to this question:

“If all diatoms were to suddenly go extinct, what would happen to the earth’s atmosphere?” And the answer was:

“it would be bad” Yeah. It would be bad. Could you expound on that a little? Just exactly what would be bad? In these instances I simply call him over and read the question aloud and ask for an oral answer. If he can tell me the answer more plainly verbally then the answer is marked correct. He did go on to tell me that he thought the oxygen would be affected but he couldn’t exactly remember. Hmmmm…partial credit? The answer was that we would eventually run out of oxygen.

For this guy of mine to even have the chutzpah to take this science test-to write words like protozoa and chlorophyta and phaeophyta…to read them and learn about them is a greater challenge than anyone who doesn’t have dyslexia can possibly understand. But he did it. And overall he did pretty well. I mean he knew what a diatrom was. I don’t remember what a diatrom is. Do you?

Now, I could focus on the fact that rarely is a sentence ever properly punctuated, rarely is there ever proper capitalization, and almost never is EVERY word in ANY sentence spelled all correctly OR I can laugh and pray and see the distance that we’ve come. He didn’t spell cycle right, but he did spell wouldn’t correctly. I never thought I would see the day that he stopped spelling would as “wud”. That’s progress. Taking the test silently and finishing it-that’s progress.

God has a plan for this son of mine. Just as God had a plan for all the famous people we hear about who were late bloomers and slow starters and out of the box thinkers. (Einstein, Edison, Churchill) God made my son just as he is for a specific purpose. He isn’t going to need to know anything more than what is required. And God will be sure he has all he needs to do whatever it is he was created to do. I don’t know what that is. Pretty sure he isn’t going to be an English teacher. But you never know. God likes to surprise us by making His power perfect in our weakness. Wouldn’t that be a hoot if one day MY son had to grade papers with spelling and grammar and word-order similar to his now? If that happened I could say that my son had come full sikele-I mean cycle! LOL! Or is that circle...well, you know what I mean!