Monday, July 31, 2006

Raising Imaginative Children:

Today I. and I have been to the park with some friends. We had a lovely time, albeit somewhat short due to the incredible temperatures and our fear of frying our children despite copius amounts of factor 40+ - how HARD is it to get paraben free organic suncream for kids - why do Green People not trade over here!! Anyway, I digress, so our fun was somewhat short lived unfortunately. We then came home to nap and she arose an hour later to draw and dance - her words!! Which was good, because she was occupied at her easel whilst I prepared the evening meal for later!

Her vocab is increasing by the day and I am now ordered to "sit" or "go away" or "dance" with her (or not!). T has jumped on this bandwagon and has appointed himself "lord high english teacher". He will read to her and then gets her to repeat words after him - "ecoutez et repetez"!! On the way back from camp he was trying to teach her the colours which she was managing really well. I have to say, these moments make my heart melt. So I chose to engage in conversation with W and ask him about his day.

W is going through a very imaginative stage at the moment. He is kind of confused as to reality and imagination I think. I am not sure how to work with this, not wanting to supress his imagination, but equally wanting to know the real story sometimes - for example:
Me "what did you do in camp today?"
Him " well....." pauses to think and remove his fingers from his mouth " we went on a bus to the beach......we went surfing and I tried to catch a wave, but there were too many jellyfish with big tentacles so I couldn't do it."
Me "anything else?"
Him - pauses to think again........"I ate some crackers"

Oh well, to live such a simple life!

T and I at this point are progressing rather rapidly to three syllable words,
T " say butterfly I."
Me - "sweetheart, it might be better to stick to simple words right.........."interupted by
I "buggerfly"

OK! that told me!

In my sad life - no surfing, no A grade spelling bee, I saw a snake yesterday and managed to create quite a furore in R that it was funny! I shouted to everyone as I was closing the curtains that there was a snake! Okay, maybe I did shout it with some kind of urgence, but I was worried they would miss seeing it........R comes in (he has a mortal fear of snakes btw!) some what AFTER the urgency - to be told it was outside on the path. He thought it was in the house.....dare I tell him it was only about a foot long and the size of a large wax crayon? Nah, I think I will leave him for a while..........

Well, time to sign off, I want to see if I can get I to say "anti-dissestablishmentarianism" tonight before bed!!!!!!!!

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