News of the day

Taking a break this time from telling Beanie's past history to write about some current events.... As I said in my introduction, I have two boys, Beanie and his older brother, who is 7 and in 2nd grade. Big bro's nickname as a baby was "Pickle" but somehow that seems too baby-ish for him now. I think now I will call him Monkeyboy, for his love of climbing anything, anywhere.

Anyway, last week Monkeyboy had an animal report to complete, along with a model of the animal's habitat, for the school science fair. He chose to write about eagles. He was very intimidated by the size of the project (8 pages!) and didn't want to do it, but with some coaching by me, he was able to break it down into small steps and tackle it. He ended up saying it was really fun and interesting, and he did a good job. Now, Mamallama (that's me) used to build props and even do museum exhibits, so it took all my willpower not to simply take over the habitat building part and do it for him (must resist urge ...but I LOVE building models...no, must resist...must resist...). In the end, he did it himself, with only minimal technical assistance from me (e.g. he wanted the eagle--a plastic toy figure--to look like it was flying, so I used fishing line to suspend it from the top of the box and anchor it to the bottom, but since I was only implementing his idea, it seemed okay for me to do it). I also helped to make the tree trunk he sculpted out of brown Playdoh sturdier by adding some support and bracing. But I always wrestle a little with how much assistance to give, and how much to let him struggle to find a way to do it himself. I have definitely seen school projects where you could tell there was heavy parental involvement.

Tonight we will go to school to see all the projects from all the grades at the Science Fair.

In addition, he was required to give his report orally to another class. This was a MAJOR source of stress for him. He was so scared to stand up in front of a class of children he didn't know well. But yesterday he gave his report to a classroom of 3rd graders, and the teacher told him it was good enough to have been done by a 3rd grader! He was so proud he could hardly contain himself. So I am one proud Mamallama today!

More tomorrow...stay tuned!