October 13 – “Into the sewer?”

The toilet seat broke in our bathroom.  How?  Well, it was a simple accident.  Cailyn stepped up on it to get the shaving cream out of the cabinet so we could do her homework.  When she stepped down, it broke from its moorings on one side, barely held on by one remaining plastic bolt on the other.  Thankfully, she didn’t disappear into the sewer.  Any questions?  Shaving cream?  Homework?  Oh, I guess I could give you a little more detail in that arena.

Cailyn’s class at school (second grade) is one where there are various attempts to encourage creativity in learning.  Whenever she completes her required daily reading, for example, she is supposed to respond to one of the reading reports questions.  These include things like, “Draw a picture of what you think this word means,” or “Find three verbs in your reading and write them here,” or the one for Friday, which was something along the lines of “Write here how this story made you think of a connection between: you and a person, you and another story, you and a feeling.”  It wasn’t exactly that, but you get the idea.  Very synergistic.  I didn’t learn how to do that kind of thing until I was working on my master’s degree.  And I didn’t realize what I was doing until I was grading papers as a teaching assistant later on in my educational career.  What is this educational system coming to these days? 

Anyway, back to the story.  Where was I?  Oh, yes, shaving cream.  In the “Learn your spelling words” category of homework assignments, one of the options was to get either sand or flour or shaving cream, spread it out on a flat surface, and spell out the words into the medium.  Well, which one would you have chosen?  Sand didn’t even get a nod.  How boring.  We live on an island.  We get our fill of sand just walking out the front door.  Flour looked promising, but we would have to clear that one with Nana.  I was certainly all in for the shaving cream, and I could even “give permission” for that one all on my own.  Great parental-power type moment for me.  Her eyes lit up at the thought … and the rest is history.  Oh, and we even did the actual assignment.  She spelled every one of her words without a glitch.  Of course I had to help with the smoothing out of the writing area after each word.  Someone had to do it. 

2 Corinthians 11:1a says, “I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that.”

Father, help all of our youngsters learn how things can be connected and how they can do more than I ever imagined.  Amen.