Piles of Paper

School has been out for one week now. I wrote this post last week but for one reason or another I didn’t get it posted so I’m doing it now.

Yesterday was the last day of school. Since I am mildly determined not to let my life fall into chaos for at least a week, I immediately sat down with the mountain of papers, half used notebooks, broken binders and other accoutrements that my children had brought home with them from school yesterday afternoon. With a garbage bag on one side of me and a box for the keepers on the other, I began the sorting process. Math journal—garbage; mostly empty graph paper notebook—box; broken, eraser-less pencil pieces—garbage; plastic folder in near perfect condition—box. You get the idea. Amidst the debris I found a few gems: Joel’s poetry folder (I learned that “epic” is pretty much his favorite adjective); awesome green tissue paper art by Nate; an assignment of Seth’s on which his teacher had written “Seth, you are a very talented artist! Well done!”; a certificate of achievement that Joel had earned for his map-reading skills in the Science Olympiad and so on. I saved the report cards too.

These are a few of my favorite things that I excavated from the heap of debris:

• A piece  of parchment with a fancy, hand-drawn capital “J” for Joel. On this he wrote about the things he likes. In part, it says “I like school alot. My favorite subject is P.E. than recess than lunch. When I get home I ask my mom if I can ask my best freind Jason if he can play he is filth rich with video games and legos and other things like that. . . my favorite sport is rugby America chaged the name to football and added downs, pads, you can’t throu is forward.” (Spelling, grammar and punctuation are all Joel’s).
• This poem. It’s very formulaic, but I still like what Joel had to say about himself. I learned something new about his aspirations at the end as well.

Joel

Loving, friendly, funny

Sibling of Seth, Nate, Danny

Who loves family, God, friends

Who feels happy, strong, funny

Who needs love, education, family

Who gives food, love, clothes

Who fears criminals, needles, sharks

Who would like to see London, Bill Gates, Australia

Dunn

• A paper that has a drawing of a cabinet on one side and a really fancy red and yellow car on the other with a line drawn down the center. The label across the top says “Need vs Want”. The pictures are labeled “need—medsen” (medicine), “want—car”. I’m glad Nate has his priorities straight.
• A large poster sized piece of paper that reads “Nate is 6 and he likes horses. He likes chicken and to walk on ropes! When he turns 8 he wants to drive a car.” I’m noticing a theme here with the car thing. What I like most about this is that I saw the other posters in the classroom and it is very evident that Nate marches to his own drum. Every other child’s said stuff like “Madison is 7 and she likes the color pink. Her favorite food is pizza. She wants to be a ballet dancer when she grows up!” and “Alex is 7 and he likes dinosaurs. He likes Chuck E. Cheese’s. He plays on a t-ball team.” There is nothing wrong with those things at all, but personally I think walking on ropes and driving a car sounds much more exciting.
• Perhaps my favorite find was a fill-in-the-blank worksheet of Nate’s entitled “’Dino-Mite’ Memories from First Grade!” There are boxes for the child to draw picture snapshots of their year: “Here I am with my teacher.” with a place to draw a picture, etc. My favorite part is where he filled in the blank “This is me when I _________”. Out of all the things from the whole year, my child chose to write and draw “This is me when I throed up     .” (throwed up as Nate would say). The accompanying illustration is quite nice too.

Yep, that sums up our school year nicely. David and I laughed about that last one for awhile. I know one thing for sure: summer will not be boring with my kids around.