April 2008

Myrna in her natural environment.


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April 2008

Tuesday, April 1:

I believe I have died and gone to Heaven. I am entering this information straight from Cloud Nine. Magnolia, ever the determined problem solver, can’t pay her cell phone bill, because she has yet to get a job since we moved. So, to avoid losing her phone, she worked out a deal with her dad. She has offered to cook breakfast and dinner and clean the kitchen every morning and evening for two weeks in exchange for her dad paying her phone bill this month. I win. She wins. Hubby gets stuck with the bill.

Actually, Pandora and Rupert win, too. Magnolia asked them what their favorite meals were, and then she made up a menu accordingly. She gets up early, she plans ahead, she sets the table and makes everything lovely, she washes up immediately afterward. I like to keep my kitchen clean, but let me tell you, when Magnolia is in charge, she takes it the extra mile. And, yes, this is the same girl who in my first book, Raisin’ Brains, made such a heartfelt mess by cleaning the kitchen for me in reverse order.

Magnolia is intense. When she wants to do something, she puts her whole heart into it. She is also fiercely independent. If this meal and menu and cleaning thing would have been my idea, she might have done it, but only halfway and grudgingly. She hates to be told what to do.

P.S.: No, this is not an April Fools’ entry.

Thursday, April 3:

SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) has just announced that the third week in July is now National Parenting Gifted Children Week. I am eager to see what kind of publicity this gets. I’d like to see the concept of giftedness and the very real needs of gifted children receive a little mainstream recognition.

Magnolia is still chugging along with her menu. Rupert and Pandora are inundating her with “thank yous” and “I love yous” as they gobble down their favorite meals. Magnolia has never been so popular.

Tomorrow I get to go in to Pandora’s school and help with an enrichment project on secret codes. I’ll let you know how it works.

Monday, April 7:

Last Friday, I went in to Pandora’s school to do an enrichment project with thirty sixth-grade students for one hour. We talked about communication and codes, and then we did a creative-problem-solving activity. The kids divided up into four teams, then I gave them each a bag of junk and told them they had fifteen minutes to develop their own way of sending codes using the junk in the bag. Interesting. Each team came up with the same solution--making alphabet shaped with the junk--except for one team which failed to come up with anything coherent. Talk about convergent thinking! The criteria for the students in the group being able to participate was that each student maintain at least a B in every subject and have every assignment turned in for the preceding two weeks. So, we’re talking about bright kids, but not necessarily gifted kids. I wonder, if the teams had involved a majority of gifted children, would the solutions have been more creative? Or were these kids perfectly capable of coming up with a more creative solution but were just not in the habit of thinking outside the box?

I also wonder about the team that failed. Perhaps they won, because they were at least exploring something a little more creative.

The biggest discovery, however, was the realization that I really enjoyed myself when I had that classroom for an hour. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I thought, “Hmmm, maybe I want to be a teacher when I grow up!”

Thursday, April 10:

Happy Birthday to Myron!

We have snow on the ground--again. I’m ready to invite Al Gore over to roll around in it. If any penguins or polar bears are in need of a good home, I’ve got a backyard they can borrow until they get back on their feet.

I took Rupert and Pandora to the city library yesterday. I was a little shocked to find a dearth of... books. Honestly, I think I have more books in my house than the library has on its shelves. I spent my whole visit feeling guilty for owning so many books when the city could apparently afford so few. I think we’re going to have to make some kind of donation or come up with a fundraiser or something. I am going to remain optimistic and assume there are so few books because there are so many avid readers in this area, and all the best books are already checked out.

But, just in case, I’ll remain on the lookout for inexpensive books to donate--after I sift through my own.

Friday, April 11:

Hubby just suggested that we forget about Groundhog Day and instead ask Al Gore to come out of a hole each February and predict how many more days until global warming comes back.

Tuesday, April 15:

Holy Toledo, we actually had a couple of warm days recently. Perhaps spring is more than just a figment of my imagination after all.

We took advantage of the weather and cleaned up the yard and planted some blueberries and a long row of raspberries yesterday and on Saturday. Pandora and Rupert helped--willingly. They both like the idea of having a garden, especially Rupert, who seems to want to learn how to do everything, from crocheting to fixing cars. We’re putting in some grapes soon, and Rupert and Pandora calculated how old they would be by the time the grape vines finally matured enough to produce grapes. This of course led to endless lines of speculation on what they would each be doing in three or four years. Pandora was pleased to announce (I could tell she was pleased by the wicked-looking smile on her face) that she would be almost sixteen in four years, and that by the time those grapes matured, she would be close to our acceptable dating age. Aaargh!

Anyway, the garden is coming along nicely for only two days of work. I’m sure that in another few weeks, we’ll get another warm day or two in which we can make more progress. No rush. In fact, maybe I’ll make a deal with Pandora that she can date as soon as the grape vine produces grapes , then I’ll sneak out at night and sabotage the plant, pulling the fruit off before it has a chance to fully emerge--maybe it will produce by the time she’s twenty or so--maybe. Of course, then, knowing Pandora, she’ll be sneaking out after me and grafting in bunches of grocery store grapes. Sort of like O’Henry’s “Last Leaf.”

Wednesday, April 16:

It “blizzarded” yesterday evening. Six inches of snow on the ground. Ice. Snow plastered to our windows. Rupert said, “Well, Mom, at least we won’t have to water the raspberries tomorrow.” The way it’s looking, we may not have to water them for another month.

On another note, Rupert is very excited about third grade. He found out the third-grade students have a science fair every April, and each student is expected to make a project to present. He’s already drafted several sets of plans for next year when it’s his turn. This means that I will spend the next twelve months with piles of papers scattered around the house, as he seems to carry his -plan-making supplies everywhere he goes. It also means that we will be saving every toilet paper tube and empty two-liter bottle that he can get his hands on, so that he will have the proper supplies for his project-of-the-week. Sigh...

Monday, April 21:

Yesterday, Rupert went on a brain-spilling spree. “Mom, did you know that Martin Luther King was sad one day when his friends couldn’t play football with him because he was black and they were white? And, did you know that he gave a famous speech about people’s rights? It started with ‘I have a dream, that someday, my children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the way they act?”

That conversation moved onto science, his favorite subject. “Mom, do you know how to tell the difference between mammals, birds, fish, and insects? I do. Did you know that whales have hair? Not much, but some. They’re mammals.” And then he proceeded to define the difference between each category and listed several animals and what kind of animal they were and why. He then moved onto other topics, just thrilled with all of this information he had hoarded away, in love with facts and ideas, and fascinated with the world around him. I was surprised at the details, some of which weren’t quite accurate but were his own interpretations of information he had ingested, but still, it was apparent his little brain was enjoying a good workout.

Earlier that day, he played Scrabble with his dad and siblings. I looked over Rupert’s shoulder at the words on his letter easel. Two words--”now” and “sexi.” After I recovered from the shock that Rupert would come up with a word like “sexi,” as he innocently sat there without giving it a second thought, I reflected on his spelling abilities. He can’t spell worth a bean. He can almost remember the first line of MLK’s speech, but he can’t remember how to spell simple words such as “please” or even, “rope.” He can read them just fine, but he can’t remember how to spell them. I’m not sure if it’s due to lack of ability or lack of interest. Does he have a disability? Or does he just prefer to invest his brain energy in other more interesting subjects?

He made a list of things he wanted his dad to remember when he comes home from work--”panet gun, panet bolls, rop,...” Just in case you can’t interpret that, it’s paint gun, paint balls, and rope. He’s got the phonics down. And, after all, doesn’t it makes sense that “paint” would be spelled as “pane” with a t? Of course, that doesn’t quite explain his leaving the silent e off “rope” now, does it. I suppose he has inconsistent phonics skills.

When it comes to science, math, or even history, Rupert is a whiz. He memorizes, he computes, he comprehends, he synthesizes. But when it comes to spelling, he “fols flat on his fais.”

Thursday, April 24:

Rupert brought up Rosa Parks today, though he calls her “Rosabelle.” I think he might be confusing her name with Roosevelt’s. He explained to me the situation about her seat on the bus, then he said, “You know, Mom, if I were an African-American back then...”

I waited for some brilliant, introspective comment, but alas! He finished, “...I would have bought some paint that was the color of the other people’s skin and painted myself so people wouldn’t pick on me.”

I had to ask him, “Rupert, what do you think was the real problem back then? Was it that some people had a different color of skin, or was it that some people chose to treat each other badly?”

He agreed that it was the latter of the two.

“So, if that was the real problem, don’t you think it would be important to solve that problem and wrong to think you could fix the situation by trying to change the thing that wasn’t wrong?”

He got my point, but I think he is still fascinated by the idea of painting his skin a different color.

This made me think--perhaps we are missing something in our quest for interesting and challenging creative-problem-solving opportunities for children. It’s important to know how to approach problem solving, but the first step, which really shouldn’t be left out, is to identify what the real problem is and why it needs to be solved.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

We have a new addition to our family. Pandora purchased a second hamster. Unfortunately, the first hamster is behaving in a most ungracious manner, so we have to keep them separated. “Crunchy” and “Munchy” share the same cage, but one of them lives in a birdcage that functions as a temporary holding cell. It’s set inside the original cage in hopes that Munchy will get used to Crunchy’s smell.

This gives me a few things to be grateful for--my friends are not chosen for me by other more powerful creatures, and I don’t develop my friendships by sniffing until I get used to my selected friend’s smell.

No wonder Munchy keeps escaping from her cage. If she’s smart, she’ll hide among the cleaning supplies. No one ever thinks to look there.

On another note--I caught Pandora in her bed reading last night--again. Of course she was supposed to be on her way to sleep since it was a school night and she has testing all this week at school. What surprised me was that the book she had chosen was her science textbook. I asked her if she was doing homework, and she sad, “No, but this is so interesting!”

I’m glad she finds science fascinating, but after ten o’clock at night, I wish she’d think about it with her eyes closed.

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