02 September 2008

The Best Blog of the Day

Blog of the Morning by Angie Smith

If you don't read Angie's blog, you should. She's fantastic and a very gifted writer. This morning as I was working through the blog reader list, I came across this post and it cracked me up. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Enjoy!
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The other day, we had a really funny conversation while I was teaching. We are doing Sing, Spell, Read and Write (which I LOVE!), and they doing great with their letters. We were working on the letter "B," and for one of the exercises, they have to cut, color, and glue the pictures that begin with that letter. There are a bunch of pictures, but only a few that match the letter for that day. As we looked through the pictures, I was saying things like, "What is this one? Ba-ba-ba-ball! Right! So that starts with B!" Ellie starts cutting, but she is being more quiet than usual, and I tell her to start saying them out loud so I can make sure she knows what she is doing. She does two in a row correctly and then holds up a picture of a chicken.

"Ba-ba-ba.....chicken." She starts to color it.

"Ellie, that is a ch-ch-ch-chicken. Not ba-ba-ba. Ch-ch-ch." She has a look of disgust. She repeats, this time with a little more intensity.

"Ba-ba-ba-chicken."

I decide to take a different teaching route and start to point at another "B" picture. "What about this one, Ellie? It's a ba-ba-ba-bus. See the difference?"

She is still coloring the chicken. She pauses and looks me dead in the eye, crayon frozen in midair.

"Mommy, why do you hate chickens?" Okay. She's serious. And I'm about to spit out my Diet Coke.

"Ellie, I don't hate chickens. It just doesn't go with today's letter. Why don't we hold onto it and we can talk about it when we do "C."

I can tell by the look on her face that this is probably not going to fly. Abby chimes in.

"Mommy, Ellie is right. You shouldn't hate a chicken." Four eyes. Staring at me. Accusing me of poultry-hatred.

"Girls. I do not hate chickens. I like chickens. It's just that chickens do not start with the letter B." They look at each other, and as a show of solidarity, Abby starts to cut out her chicken. I bury my head in the lesson book so they don't see me laughing. I did take a picture of Ellie holding the picture with a look of disdain.

Later that night, a neighbor-girl was over and they are playing dress up. And by "dress up," I mean "destroying every closet in the house."

I am in the kitchen making dinner when Ellie saunters in with a feather boa, tutu, and oversized purse.

"Hi mama."

"Hi Ellie. What are you doing?"

"We're playing ballet dancers. What about you?"

"Making dinner."

"What are you making?"

"Chicken." Clearly I have not thought this through.

She stops in mid-prance and looks at her friend, who, apparently, is in the know about her chicken theory.

"Told you," she whispers under her breath.

Her friend nods in wide-eyed unison as they march into the playroom while I trail off..."I do not hate ch-ch-ch-chickens!"

Two days later, Ellie announces that she is a becoming a vegetarian.

I serve her vegetables, in order to prove that I am an equal-opportunity food server.

She smells them and pushes her plate away.

"I think I want chicken, mommy." She smiles. We eat chicken (some of us with loose teeth), and of course during our nightly prayers, Ellie talks about her beloved picture, and the day early next week when he will rightly claim his throne as the "C" word.

Have I mentioned I love homeschooling?

2 comments:

Sharon said...

I adore Angie Smith's blog!!! She is incredibly gifted and such an inspiration to me!

Gwen Oatsvall said...

ok, that was hilarious and so familiar ...you have to love how the mind works on our children and how our mind goes crazy when trying to figure them out ...