Autumn discovered one of those crumpled up pieces of paper on the table yesterday that are all-too-common in a house with four children. Usually these are glanced at to ensure they aren’t some misplaced homework assignment and tossed, but this one was different. On it were written a series of haiku in the mode of the eight-year-old mind:

Make a flower bloom;
The sun does it tomorrow,
Rain does it today.

Is it a springer?
For I have a singu[l]ar,
And I have a light.

Never be meanest;
For the people important
Are to be kindest.

Oh, God alas,
Who made the brontosaurus;
And in fact is Lord.

See a flower bloom;
In the streaming sunshine,
Where the rainbow ends.

Oh, brontosaurus;
With the big feetosaurus,
And ancient broad past.

These are rendered as written. I’ve only corrected the spelling of ’singular’ in the second haiku after asking him what he was talking about. Even so, the second still seems the weakest in the series. When I asked him about them this morning he said he was listening to the fourth grade lecture instead of doing his work. Jade is in third grade and shares his classroom with the second and fourth grades. Homework has been a problem. What do you do?

In this case I made a mental note of the intangible benefit of multi-grade classrooms implicated, congratulated him on his poetic debut, and reminded him that it is important finish what his teacher has assigned him before delving into extracurricular adventures.

Tags: Jade,St. Luke's LES
Categories: Family, Public