Saturday, November 13, 2010

it's bedtime, it's bedtime, it's bedtime

"It's bedtime..." these two words repeated over and over in different keys, comprise the bedtime song of Benjamin, the four-year-old I'm babysitting tonight. Not terribly original, but effective.

**

Sweden's Father's Day is tomorrow, so this morning's craft was a card to Dad, complete with a drawing by the child of him and his father.

This was a pretty easy project, aside from the inevitably ambiguous squiggles that the children labeled as "Dad" and "me." Not terribly flattering likenesses, but endearing coming from your child.

Julius, a six-year-old in the bilingual class who understands barely any English, had a few problems with the project. He grabbed the sample card with a picture drawn of Kenisha (my co-teacher) and her dad. He copied it exactly – including the labels – and ended up with a Father's Day card with a picture of Kenisha instead of himself. I took his paper away and asked him to draw another one, emphasizing that he was to draw "Julius" (point at him),
not Kenisha.

He drew himself. And then he drew his mom and told me he was finished. I would have let it go, except for the fact that it was a Father's Day card. So I had him add his father into the picture.


3 comments:

Brother Chris said...

Still loving your blog!

A) See? It's good that I didn't join you guys last night. I know it would have been fun but you got to get all your guy/boy/man/husband talking done. What would I have done? Stared at my carrots n' cheese dip and mumbled something about "Look for guys who aren't like me", that's what.

B) Poignant as the ending of your previous post was, I can assure you that your pale, blue-eyed 3-year-old's dad will indeed be getting cards. I spent two hours on Thursday chasing him and his brother around while they got paint all over EVERYTHING, made themselves "Green Monsters!", screaming, squealed, and splashed.

But only after making elaborate crafts for dad out of egg cartons, magazine cut-outs, and all that paint.

Sho said...

Brother Chris! hahaha I seriously didn't get who that was at first.

to respond:

1) there was no carrots n' cheese dip
2) you could've given the man view!
3) awwww I'm so happy he'll be around. i've ditched my pathos appealing last paragraph.

he seemed so sad, but maybe he was spacing:P

me again said...

Oh them kids is spacey, trust me. They're like, mom-level spacey, or at least Alexander is.

But yeah. Papa visits them every six weeks and postcards come regularly.