Once every two weeks I get to watch several of my grandkids. Some days I feel like I HAVE to watch them, not because they aren’t amazing, but more because occasionally I feel older than I am! Today, I GOT to watch them!
Homeschool co-op was cancelled for today. That means that Lindsay and I didn’t have to get 5 kids ready, take them 30 minutes away, help our two “outliers” work up the gumption to want to be in such a large group of kids, figure out which one of us was going with which small group etc. Now, I love co-op! but I also love pajama school!
Two of the three kids I had at the house, Noah 8 and Eva 5 decided to take a late morning nap. That left me and Elijah 5 with time to spend uninterrupted. This was a great gift!
So, Elijah and I, who rarely get any “just us” time, set off to do fun school. We made home made lemonade – because I knew Elijah specifically would like the hands on job of rolling and squeezing lemons and stirring the sugar water. We sorted coins. That was actually the beginning of “grandma school”.
Grandma School is a great thing! Grandma is privileged. Grandma doesn’t have to go by the syllabus, doesn’t have to care what the actual unit is in social studies, doesn’t have to make anybody really do anything! I just get to teach Grandma stuff! So today, Elijah and I learned how to trade pennies for nickels and pennies for dimes, and pennies for quarters. He thought it was a game, and I knew it was important life skills. Later we involved the rest of the kids as we played “Grandma’s Store!”
But, while the others were still asleep, we played Legos. He built his structures, I built mine. Then, a great moment of teaching appeared: “Grandma, what are you building?” As I explained my garden where there were places to walk and places to grow, windows to let light in for seed growing, and a duck to eat bugs (we all know this is theoretical knowledge on my part) he listened intently. When I asked him about his place, it was his house, but he thought growing things was a good idea – so he started a garden. We grew blueberries, strawberries, carrots, broccoli and lettuce. We traded surplus produce to each other, we shared a wheelbarrow. He brought in goats (wonder why) and I added a pig. He snuck strawberries into my freezer just to surprise me and I taught him that animal poop was great to help your veggies grow faster. We had fences and borrowed each other’s little square/rectangle animals. No one looking into our little farmers world would have had any idea that the little rectangle blocks with one on top were farm animals, but we knew and that is all that mattered.
There is one little square, flat and brown, in his garden on the long red Lego. That is pig poop. hahahahaha! Took my advice right to heart!
I had to explain that animal poop does not make veggies taste bad, it makes the dirt have lots of vitamins and nutrition. He never looked quite convinced of that. He said, “In real life, I’m not going to touch pig poop – except maybe with gloves or a shovel”. I thought that was very wise!
What a day of learning we had. Some of it was about farm life. All of it was fun. Precious time and lovely smile from Mr. Elijah all day today.
brandnewfarmers 