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Thursday, October 20

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Tales from the Steppes


2005-10-24

12:36 a.m.
Monday, October 24

My weekend was mostly spent supervising mongols' school projects. The EM has a really cool assignment, called a Milestone Project, due later this week. The children were required to ask an "I wonder why" ecosystem question, research the answer, and develop some piece of art to go with it. The art could be of any form - dance, poetry, drama, 2-D visual, music, etc, whatever best fits the question, one hopes. The EM's question is about bears hibernating and the art portion is a visual work in pastels. Which means a lot of my time to teach her how to work in pastels.

At first it was very frustrating because I kept TELLING her how to work with them. I kept talking about sketching and blocking out the drawing, because I did not want to prejudice her work. It really needed to be her artistic composition and vision, not mine. This attempt failed miserably, wasting paper and pastels. I really should have known better. So I got out a piece of paper and showed her, talking as I drew. And she completely got it, even the understanding that you have to draw for someone seeing it from a different distance. She is not done yet, so I forsee hours more of my time but maybe I can make it a little more productive and fulfilling for her.

The YM continues his trend of being the child voted "Most Likely to Get Hung Upside Down From a Tree." Last night he somehow managed to get his brother between the mattress and slats and then jumped on the mattress. Or so I am told. I am supposed to believe that the YM snuck up on the MM while he was changing his sheet, pushed him under the mattress and then ran and jumped on it, while the MM was presumably playing dead. The real puzzling issue here is that the YM is a 45 lb 5 year old, made up of muscle and hair and the MM is 110 lb 8 year old, made up of muscle and, well, fat. The MM is tall, he's large, he's dense like a rock. He's built like a freaking linebacker. I have problems moving him. Am I really supposed to believe that the YM pushed him under his mattress? And how did the YM sneak up on him? He's constantly laughing or singing - he can't sneak up on anyone. What I think happened is that the MM got in between his mattress and slats and told his brother to jump on him, or maybe the YM just seized the opportunity, and it hurt, so it is all the YMs fault. Well, whatever actually happened, the YM should have known better, whether his brother invited this or not. So, no dessert for three days for him.

Past Few Tales


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Thursday, October 26

Friday, October 20

Thursday, October 19

Wednesday, October 18


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