Am I smarter than a third grader?

Every weekday we follow a strict routine in my family. Alex, Sami and Aidan get out of school at 2:30 in the afternoon and we go straight home. The first thing on our agenda is homework, but we often make some time for an after school snack. As it turns out, I am usually the most in need of some brain food as we undertake the evening's assignments. When did homework become so difficult? I am proud to say that I excel at Aidan's Pre-K assignments, and rarely come across a challenge that I cannot meet. Sami's first grade homework gets the juices flowing in my brain, neither for the content nor its difficulty, but instead for all the new terminology and methods that make the content almost unrecognizable to me. Then there's Alex's third grade homework. I used to consider myself quite a proficient mathematician, but I now find myself relying on my calculator to check his calculations. By the time all the assignments are complete, I feel as though I have just struggled through an entire school day, and that I have just barely lived to tell about it!

Vocabulary

1. routine: something you do on a regular basis; day to day
2. agenda: a schedule, or order of events
3. undertake: to start something, or take on something
4. terminology: words used in a process, or to describe something
5. unrecognizable: something you do not know, or have never seen before
6. proficient: to be very good at something

Use the vocabulary words to complete these sentences:
1. Sheila changed so much that she was _______________ to me.
2. When will you be able to _________________ that new project?
3. We always go to breakfast after Mass as part of our ____________.
4. She has studied Italian for many years, and is _____________ in the language.
5. Our travel ____________ states that we will go to London before Paris.
6. The teacher gave me a vocabulary list for the lesson so that I could learn the __________.

Grammar Point: Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that act like glue. They help us connect one thought to another, or to connect two or more independent clauses to create a compound sentence. Two common examples of conjunctions are 'and' and 'but,' although there are many more. Reread the passage above and find examples of conjunctions. Then try to write your own sentence using a conjunction.