Hot Chocotate

This has been my day today. Its 12:17. Its one of those, what happened to my morning sort of days. Right now, I glanced at the craft closet, where Sweetling is standing unwrapping red modeling clay. Where is the modeling clay going? What is the modeling clay doing? I don't know. All I know is that it involves aardvarks at a spaghetti restaurant.

Behind me, on the floor of the school room, is said spaghetti restaurant. Four paper aardvarks have been drawn with crayon then cut out and taped onto popsicle sticks to make puppets. An elaborate platter made of paper, decorated, taped to a small plastic container, rests in the middle of the aardvarks. White yarn spaghetti is piled high on the plate, red construction paper forms the sauce, and popsicle stick breadsticks are artfully arranged in the plastic container. Each aardvark has a bathroom dixie cup placed next to them, the contents of which are red magnetix building toys, red modeling clay (so that's where that went), red construction paper scraps, with the last cup left empty but with its interior colored red with a marker. The aardvarks order was carefully recorded by Sweetling on her PDA.

The order is thus, and is graciously typed into my blog by Sweetling herself:

1. Spaghetti
2.Breadsticks
3. Tomatoe juice

Speckle the Leopard has just entered the restaurant and has ordered spaghetti with extra meatballs. Sweetling has run off in search of said meatballs. A dessert course is to follow.

Also today, I've had two cups of hot chocolate. Its been a hot chocolate kind of morning.

Our intentions this morning were to sit down and complete our regular school lessons. We finished our Bible lesson and Sweetling was working on math when Fluffy broke in half. Fluffy is, of course, a packaging peanut. Sweetling has many Fisher Price people that were saved from the Jedi's toys back in the 70's. Three of the FisherPrice people, named Kelly, Brian, and Uncle John, join us during our math time whenever our lessons are primarily word problems. Kelly and Brian somehow aquired Fluffy as a pet this past week.

However, tragedy struck this morning, and all regular lessons were suspended. Emergency operations immediately swung into place, as a rescue mission for Fluffy was commenced. Tacky glue was retrieved from the closet and a pin used to declog its opening. The peanut halves were glued back together and Fluffy was set on the microwave to dry. Skeptical of the success of this proceedure, Mommy suggested that perhaps a new Fluffy could be made. A hunt was on for the materials. A fat fat fuzzy white craft wire was found, twisted, and clipped into the appropriate shape. A miniture pink pom pom and two tiny googly eyes were glued on for a nose. This Fluffy too was placed on top of the microwave to dry. In the meantime Sweetling made Fluffy a chew toy out of a magenta craft wire.

How we went from bionic Fluffy to the spaghetti restaurant I'm not sure....I believe that the word problems for the lesson were all set in a restaurant. But here we are. 12:38 now.

I tell myself the sign of a great teacher is to be able to recognize the value of many different activities in the overall development of a child.

And really, I think nothing that could come out of a book could be equal to the creativity and imagination of the morning.

Therefore, I'm going to go make myself a third cup of hot chocolate. Speckle is enjoying a tissue paper spaghetti plate, topped with a uninflated red ballooon and a half a plastic easter egg meatball.

When do we, as adults, loose this wonderful creativity and ability to make our dreams come true out of *anything*?

I think I might just go paint some ivy and leaves along the walls of my kitchen.