Say WHAT?

At the end of every year in elementary school, the kids come home with a summer workbook.

I'm not sure if this is just to torture the parents, or the kids, or both.  Or because the school really thinks that we are going to just lay around and play video games all summer long while slowly turning our brains into soup.  Whatever the reason, and I'm sure there is one, the kids are asked to complete this workbook over the summer and return it the first week back to school.

And I knew it was coming.  And I didn't want to have the end of summer stress over completing/finding/working on said workbook.

So at the end of the year, I instantly grabbed the kids backpacks and pulled out all of the returned art projects, pencil boxes, piles of papers and the summer workbooks.  Except Sam didn't have one.  Only emily.

Strange.  I double checked but Sam most certainly did NOT have one.  Nor was their a letter about one. And since I checked the same day as they brought everything home, I was confident in my assessment.  Which is where I made my mistake.

So all summer, Emily faithfully did a page or two every few days.  Plugging right along.

Last week- just a few short days before school begins- Emily and I are looking over her completed work and how much is left to do.  We are chatting over why she has had to do it, why she WILL do it even if she doesn't want the ice cream treat, and why it is valuable.  And how strange it is that Sam didn't have one.

"That?  Oh I have one of those" he said, very casually while playing a video game and turning his brain into soup.

WHAT!?!?!?!?

Sam- it was not in your bookbag, you didn't bring one home?

"Yeah I did.  I put it in my desk drawer, I'll show you".

And there it was. A brand new, never touched, not a single flippin page completed summer workbook with a letter from the teacher tucked neatly inside.  Apparently he came straight home from school and took it right to his new desk in his room and tucked it away for safe keeping. And that was that.

And so for the last week of summer break, we have been working basically non stop on his summer workbook.  Tracing numbers, counting turtles, linking like items.  I can only hope that he will plow through the rest of it tonight in order to have it completed by tomorrow- the deadline.

Next year, I'm gonna stand at the door like a metal detector and scan them before they can come in the house.