Challenge Word

My 6 year old boy is such a strange student. He good at the parts of school where boys are typically good - math and science. He's a good reader, thankfully. He doesn't like to write but he is a good speller. (Can we all pause to thank the good Lord that the spelling gene wasn't passed to my two older kids?) He really doesn't like school, but he's good at it. If I can make him forget he's doing school, he's fine. 

Strange. At least he's a good speller.

Cue my frustration when today he was struggling to spell "hit." Yep. H*I*T. 

Dude. I know you were up late with the craziness of the Steeler win, but you have to work with me here. 

This situation melted down until he couldn't even remember what vowels were. 

I would like to state that I remained calm, cool, collected and encouraging throughout this entire ordeal. (Never mind that the 4 year old chose that moment to play the piano which is 2 feet from where we were sitting after I had already told him not to. And never mind that the suddenly caustic 9 year old girl kid thought that him not remembering the his vowels was the funniest thing ever.)

Okay, fine. I didn't. Remain calm, cool and collected that is.

I think I only said, "Dude, seriously...?" about 5 times. (I don't even think anyone says, "Dude" anymore, but that's how it is with us homeschoolers. We stay behind the times.)

He eventually did remember his vowels, and eventually spelled the blasted hit.

Next up? Spelling test. 

Oh yes. No mercy for the weak and tired. 

So he has 10 words, all of which he got correct.

Then he has 3 challenge words. As I got ready to call out the challenge words, he leveled a look at me and said, "You ought to make 'hit' one of my challenge words."

I laughed. A lot. I was pretty proud of that self depreciating, yet light hearted look at our situation.

I then got the opportunity to explain a very profound and complicated phenomeon. 

The brain fart. 

They liked that. A lot.