As is our family practice, I get to put a set of grandchildren (Liana , nearly 8, and Luke 6) to bed every Friday night with a bedtime story, improvised on the spot, focussing on some vent of the day. The kids often suggest variations on the story as we go along.
30 minutes before bedtime, Luke was energetically playing with his new yellow plastic ball. Then he spied me doing something on my iPad: I was reading up on ”active listening" and making notes using, paper by 53.
"Can I try?" Luke asks:
So I set a new page on Paper by 53 and handed him Pencil by 53.
"How do you erase" was his first question.
I showed him that Pencil could erase by using its top eraser tip.
I set it to black ink fountain pen and Lukie sat down to experiment :
This is what he came up with.
Then Liana wanted a turn.
Luke did not want to give up his shot on the ipad, so I picked up his ball and said
"Luke Look".
And Luke came over to me
I showed Liana for 20 seconds how to call up the colour palate and change colours.
She tried the different writing tools and said she preferred marker.
Then I started my bedtime story
Luke look, I said, holding up his yellow ball
When you look inside your ball you can see two tiny people.
can you see who they are?
It's Ashley and Veronica
(In the car ride home from dinner the kids had been talking about their two year old twin cousins Ashley and Veronica)
And Ashley and Verinica are dressed in TaeKwonDo uniform...
And so the story went on and on and
Liana said; look...
Without prompting, without prior example,
without guiding, Liana had produced a graphic recording of the first part of the story!
She wanted to do more but it was getting late.
Time to say our prayers Luke reminded
And we did.
I slept so happy that night