Planned Play

Mornings are pretty rushed in our house. My daughter gets up around 7 am and is out the door by 7:15 am. We’re even more rushed when I take my daughter and her cousin to school. My university is fifty minutes away, and I need to get on the road.

With my semester at an end, I can afford to give my daughter a little more time, and that’s been a good thing. She loves to play with her cousin, and our tight time margin every morning (and her cousin’s frequent late arrivals) left little time for that this academic year. Now that I don’t have to be anywhere, I feel better giving her and her cousin some quality time.

This morning, that meant ten minutes.

Yesterday evening, my daughter was upset about cleaning up her elaborate horse set-up, the thing she’d most like to play with her cousin. I struck her a deal. I said she would have time to set up the horses before the cousin came if she got up early. If she would get up early, I promised to give them ten minutes of playtime, regardless of when the cousin showed up.

She agreed.

I woke up her ten minutes early, and by 7 am, she had eaten a muffin, gotten dressed, and arranged the horses just so.

The minutes ticked by. No cousin.

I assured her, “I promised I would give you ten minutes, and I will.” The cousin showed up about 10 minutes later, and they enjoyed their short horse excursion.

Don’t tell my daughter that I set the clock for twelve minutes. I know I spoil her!

Little House

A month ago, I got my daughter to try audiobooks. On Saturday, she completed her second one: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie.

I was very proud of her for three reasons.

  1. She completed the book over the course of three weeks. She didn’t listen to the book every day, but she was excited about it when she did. Her sustained attention and bit-by-bit commitment to the book thrilled me.
  2. She comprehended what she read. After she finished the book, I gave her a quiz (of course) using these questions but omitting the multiple-choice answers. She got 14/14, and I knew she understood the book because she didn’t need me to list the potential answers.
  3. She was so proud of herself. “I finished the book!” I’m sure her older cousins haven’t read Little House yet (though they’ve seen way more of the TV show than my daughter!). For a kindergartener, it’s pretty impressive.

The only thingsleft for me to do? Give her a Star Card then have her write a short review!

Marketing Wizard

I’m in charge of our church’s VBS this summer, and I’ve been putting together flyers and videos this week.

This afternoon, I enlisted my daughter for our video’s picture and song. She played percussion on the song and wore a sweet smile in the photo that accompanied our VBS anthem: “Plant your roots! Grow good fruits!”

When she gets a chance to perform, she shines.

The Newspaper

After school today, my daughter announced that she wanted us to start reading the newspaper.

The only person we know who gets the newspaper is her grandparents down the road. She got onto her bike, put on her helmet, and pedaled down the road with me walking alongside her.

We brought the paper home, and she read one national article (Biden re: jobs), one local article (our city is getting a new park), and one full-page ad (“They’re having a deal!”).

We’ll see if this lasts longer than one day.

Library Card

My daughter finished a week where she was library obsessed by obtaining her first library card.

One perk? It came with this sweet swag bag!

Yesterday at church, she sang along with the hymns and responded with the congregational creed. As we head into the summer, she’s reading like a champ. This library card will help her keep it up. It’s great to see.

Rhetorical Moves – A Running Series

In this running series, I’ll document my daughter’s verbal pyrotechnics. My focus will be on less what she says than how and why she says it.

Tonight, my daughter uttered the following sentence: “Mama has good ideas, but I have genius ideas.”

My wife’s idea? Make S’mores using our fire pit.

My daughter’s idea? Eat S’mores made on our fire pit.

She might be overstating her insight.

Library

When I walked into my daughter’s bedroom this morning, I saw this.

I asked my daughter what was going on.

“It’s a library,” she explained.

This evening, she had a book reading at this kid’s library, and she read me The Diary of a Worm. She was a great reader and effectively sold the book’s humor and profundity.

She even assisted me in checking out a book with a pretend scanner. It does my heart good to see her have fun with books.

Among the Wolves

After picking her up from school on Monday, I took my daughter on a 45-minute car trip into the heart of Greenville. I thought the trip would be a perfect time to get her back on the audiobook train. After explaining where we were going, I gave her the Little House on the Praire play-away she had started a week earlier.

I didn’t have to ask her twice.

The entire trip, her eyes went back and forth from the driver-side windows to the passenger-side windows, taking in the unfamiliar route as she listened to the Ingalls’ saga.

She was transfixed, and I could see her eyes enlarge or contract depending on the book’s action.

When we arrived, I asked her how the book was.

“Good,” she said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Wolves,” she responded. Fair enough.

Rhetorical Moves – A Running Series

In this running series, I’ll document my daughter’s verbal pyrotechnics. My focus will be on less what she says than how and why she says it.

My daughter doesn’t like carrots, but they’re on her plate every night. Typically, we give her one more carrot that she will eat, then talk her into consuming what we really hoped she would eat.

Typically, she adopts the, “How many carrots do I have to eat?” tactic.

Tonight, she set off a rhetorical bomb by going after the carrot’s taste.

She announced, with no other fanfare, “This carrot tastes like the vacuum smells.”

Mission accomplished. After my wife and I had finished laughing, we let her out of that night’s carrot consumption.

The (perhaps) dangerous message we were sending? It’s not your objection. It’s how you object.

The Play and the Poster

My wife’s old high school put on a production of Beauty and the Beast. My daughter really wanted to go. On Friday, she announced that we just had to go that night: “It’s the last show! Tonight at 7:oo!” I told her that if the last time to go to the show as that night, then we couldn’t go. She was heartbroken.

I promised her we would make a visit to the theater this summer.

But six-year-olds don’t always get the details right.

That night, I went on the web and discovered the final show was Sunday afternoon. I snagged two tickets, making sure one was an aisle so my daughter would have a line of sight. I couldn’t go (church responsibilities), but I was glad she and my wife would get to attend.

My daughter loved it. She took the playbill to school the next day.

After dropping her off at school Monday morning, I went to a local coffee shop to work. On their bulletin board, they had a beautiful Beauty and the Beast flyer . I asked for it on a whim and brought home a free poster for my daughter’s room.

A tale as old as time…