"Under the fence / Catch the sheep / Back we go / Off we leap"
Today Judd the Red Chicken had a treat. His favorite teacher (now retired from the public school system) teaches knitting, and so we have arranged for two knitting lessons a month (it's the last class we can add before I start donating plasma). He has wanted to learn how to knit for at least three years, so the stars certainly aligned for him on this one. In fact, he is so peacefully cheerful (THE balance one hopes for with a nine-year old boy... the other cheerful -- the explosive spastic kind -- makes me question the very principle of reproduction) that he agreed to teach The Girl how to knit once he gets it down. Makes me warmer inside than a cardigan and thick socks ever can.
Here's what's brilliant -- other than that cute little rhyme that helps him remember how to create stitches, and a discussion on wool -- he's also learning MATH. Today the two knitters chatted about things like: "diameter" and "circumference." Fingers crossed that he will have to eat his words (those words being: I hate math and I don't agree that it's useful). If anybody can bring about word-eating it will be this teacher. She doesn't force-feed; she makes things appealing.
I have some words to eat. I believe I documented here that I am leaving the kids to their own self-regulation when it comes to reading and submitting book reports. If they want their bank accounts to increase then they put the work in without prodding. I have stepped completely and totally out of it, and in so doing am providing a rich opportunity for success or failure... a lesson in self-motivation... an untainted case study in causal determinism.
Except here's the thing: I really like reading the book reports.
So I might have heard myself -- perhaps more than once -- maybe, sort of, almost providing the most modicum of modicums of encouragement to get going on the book reports.
Now that I'm aware of it I'm going to totally snap back -- becoming once again the disinterested banker.
Here's why I'm hungry for more -- at the end of the form there are the questions: "What did you learn? What will you do differently?"
A snippet from the report on Ramona Forever:
"I learned that I should be nice to [Judd the Red Chicken] because it sounds tarribel when Beezus and Ramona fight so I should not do it."
From J.T. -- a tender book from the 70's:
"I learned that cats like bread. I think I'll not take a privete bathroom for granted."
Glimpses inside my kids' minds -- it's what my son called his hot cocoa yesterday -- "the juice... no... no... the nectar of the angels."
