Why

We knew that the transition from homeschool to a conventional classroom was going to require the cultivation of new habits. I pictured Caroline wandering out of a lecture without asking to use the bathroom, or digging into her goldfish crackers at 9:30 in the morning and noisily crunching them during silent reading. I tried to prepare her, but knew that their would inevitably be things I hadn't thought of.

The unforeseen first appeared on day two, the first night homework was assigned. Caroline had to write sentences for the week's vocabulary words: anthropology, anthropomorphic, anthropocentric and anthropophagus.  "Bill loved the musical Beauty and the Beast when the anthropomorphic plates dance and sing" was one of her sentences. I had to get out my big fat Random House Dictionary when she asked me to look them over.  They looked to be contextually accurate and grammatically correct. If we were homeschooling, we would have been done with it.

BUT......the paper (run of the mill college ruled notebook paper), was upside down and backward, the margin was in the middle of the page, and the assignment was going to be unintentionally turned in anonymously.

I had to break the bad news to her. "Crud" was her response. After a brief lesson from me in binder paper protocol, she re-wrote the assignment.

As I write this, Caroline is working on week two's vocabulary which include geochronology and geomorphology. 

I am going to need the dictionary again.