Often when I come to pick Wanda up from school, I find her down in the craft area, rushing slowly and methodically to complete whatever craft project they’ve been working on that day. The other kids are at circle time or have finished circle time and are getting on their coats and Wanda is plugging away, gluing eyes on a penguin or covering her body in glitter on its way to a sparkly one-legged pumpkin monster.
She has one of those magical teachers who lets them do the crafts their way or not at all if they don’t feel like it and if Wanda just HAS to finish putting the spikes on her ninja slug, then Teacher Kira moves on to circle time without her. This pleases me.
Wanda’s not the only kid to take this creative license and run with it. A couple of weeks ago I was helping the kids make delicate spring flowers at the craft station and one little boy looked at me like I’d misplaced my mind, gestured at the supplies and asked, “Where’s the red marker?”
“I didn’t know we needed a red marker. What do you need a red marker for?”
Um… Idiot. “The fire.”
Obviously.
Because we must always draw flames enveloping our lovely construction paper spring flowers. Now I know better and next time I will DO better.
Well today when I picked Wanda up from school, she was the last man standing at the craft table. She sat carefully gluing segments of a slithering creature, each labeled with a letter, W, O, R, M.
“Cool, Wanda,” I said, and because I am the nicest mom ever, I added, “I like your caterpillar.”
“MO-OM! It’s a W-W-W-Worm!”
Apparently W is the letter of the week. Teacher Kira let them hold actual writhing worms today because writhing starts with W.
“Riiiight. A worm. Got it.”
She flipped over the last piece of the worm body and… AGGGG, like a puzzle piece in a survivor challenge, the last one did not fit. She had put the glue on the wrong side of the paper. So I voted her off the island. The end.
I kid. I kid.
She was distraught and threw the piece down in despair, her head flopping back in defeat. “I glued the wrong SIDE!”
“It’s okay,” I said, “You can glue it on like this.” I pinned the tail on the worm.
“Agh,” she said, “It looks weird.”
“I know,” I retorted, “That’s the point. W-w-w-weird. Weird starts with W.”
She shrugged, agreeing.
You can’t argue with alphabetics.
