Pre-School Essays

So, this past summer, Evelyn went to San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. She traveled on airplanes & trains, slept for a whole week in a tent at the Ranch, attended TWO weeks of day camp, spent three days in O.C., and rode every accessible ride at the State Fair.

Then why do we have an "essay" on our frig that finishes the sentence: "This summer I..." with Evelyn's phrase "saw a mouse??" It even has her artistic rendering of the rodent, up to which she recently walked and said, "Look at my rat."

I stopped what I was doing and asked, "So when your teacher asked you what you did this summer, what did you say?" She replied, "I saw a rat."

"Is that a picture of the rat?" I ask.

"Yes."

We guessed that the teacher, knowing Evelyn can't read, wrote "mouse" instead of "rat" to either abate her own disgust or shield us from embarrassment. (No, the rat was not inside our house.)

And here's another entitled "My First Days of Pre-Kindergarten:"

My favorite thing was..............playing with Barbies.
I did not like..............................sharing.
Tomorrow I will........................try to draw something funny. (What's funnier than a rat, the most impressive summer experience of 2009? Oh, she means funny "ha ha.")

Finally, Amelia's class starts Show and Tell this month. Amelia's wise, experienced teacher put her as the very, very, last student to have a turn. Will she be talking in school by then? Perhaps I could learn from my youngest that "a prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly." (Prov. 12:23) Goodness knows I've had my share of blurting.

And a video of each of them--Amelia singing (or rather, her PONY singing), which is pretty much the soundtrack of life around here (but not at school, remember), and Evelyn spinning out of her drawers at a playground where we spent Labor Day evening.