Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)
A couple weeks ago, our son Alex rediscovered a book that his Grammy had bought him a while back. “A Hatful of Seuss” is a compilation of five Dr. Seuss books. He was reading it on his own and would ask me every night, “Dad, can I read this story to you?” I let him do that one night, until I was reminded of just how long Dr. Seuss stories are!
But it was really cute, and the story was pretty funny – and brought back a lot of memories – so the next night I said I would read a whole story to both the boys. They were excited, and I was looking forward to it, and it turned out to be so great that not only did we do that night, we started getting LOTS more from the library!
From all of this Seuss-ing, a side effect has cropped up. We may have discovered more than just a Seuss book when Alex first dug up that Seuss collection. 🙂
Turns out, Ian was pretty hooked by the writing of Theodore Geisel, and even found a book at our library all about his life. He read it rather quickly, and I believe has pretty much recounted in stories told to mom & dad everything in that book, word for word! He really liked it!
The interesting part is that not only did he like the book, and like telling us the stories… he also has been telling us little snippets from his “inside world” about how he feels like Dr. Seuss. He’s creative, and really identifies with Suess’ style and I think his life. It’s been pretty interesting to see that connection, and hear Ian talk about who he is and what he wants to do in a grander scheme of life.
Guess he is growing up.
So, to encourage that a bit (and just have some fun) we wrote a Buffalo Bills poem yesterday. We made sure to keep to an ABAB rhyme scheme, and even kept the meter at 7 syllables, then 8, then 7, then 8. It’s not quite finished (and maybe not quite Suess-ish, but it was pretty fun! Perhaps we’ll share it here someday. 🙂
Also watched a video recommended by Joe about education and creativity… very interesting. I very much agreed with a lot of what this guy was saying. Mainly, how the way our educational system is set up now, creativity is not only not encouraged, it can be squashed. The more creative types are then pushed aside – or worse, medicated – in order that they might “get in line”.
Watching the video, and seeing Ian recently “discover” some things about himself, reminded me how glad I am that we home school.
So I’ll keep you updated on the progress of our young Dr. Seuss. Should be pretty fun to watch. 🙂