By the second day of working with a seven year old, I listen wistfully to the big yellow monster rolling past my house. Is it too late to sign him up? Would public school for just this one be so bad? Am I too old to do this all over again? I brace myself, and try again, reading to him about the early days of this continent, about the mammoths and saber-tooth tigers that once lived here.
The next day, I tell him of a surprise. We are going somewhere. We travel to the Falls of the Ohio, so named for waterfalls that are now under water due to dams and locks built help navigate the river, but exposing Devonian era rock filled with fossils, some huge, from the period of time when this area was a shallow sea. Even in our own creek bed, miles away, I find horned coral. But here, fossils are everywhere you look, and are very large.
He is anxious to get back to the rocks, climbing up and down the piles of rocks and reminding me why God gave teenagers the ability to have children and why forty years olds doing the same ought to keep up their aerobics.
Notes:
I've threatened to cut the cable wires to the TV due to someone whining about schoolwork and a desire to watch TV instead. It seems a higher power agrees with me, as the downstairs TV cable isn't working. William is less than willing to be alone upstairs due to being scared of the naked man roaming our neighborhood. What??? Read about that tomorrow.
1 comment:
You are a true educator!
Glad that even conservative areas have fossils ;-)
aloha-
Comfort Spiral
Post a Comment