So I don’t know if Learning Logs will be of as much interest to you as they are to me, but I can’t find a word processing application on my computer, so I’m logging it here for the moment. I definitely need a new name for them. Learning Log just sounds…Lame.
We spent most of the day yesterday with my childhood friend, Cara, and her Ani (who’s three) — either at her house or at ours. She lives just around the corner. Okay, just around three corners. But it’s close.
She, brave soul, invited us over to bake muffins. She set each girl up with their own bowl and let them choose things like which kind of flour to put in their own muffins, which kind of fruit, which toppings. A muffin smorgasbord.
I don’t think I’ve ever personally made muffins in a bowl. Everything gets made in my kitchen aid, and most of my muffins are of the Betty Crocker variety. And, on reflection, I realized that my baking-with-kids philosophy is “have them involved in every project but get it done as quick as you can or the whole experience might just disintegrate into a floury bog”.
Said philosophy means that I don’t think I’ve ever let Lia crack an egg. Twice at the most (surely I must have let her crack an egg at some point in all of our baking extravaganzas). Which is a shame, because she did it quickly and with aplomb.
And then we got to the spooning batter into the muffin tin part. A part I always do. And not only did Lia confidently and efficiently spoon her batter in, Amelie could do it too.
Yet another example of how we (I) underestimate (my) children.
I had really begun to think of this chronic underestimation while watching my sister play handbells. She’s 14, a freshman, a teenager–you know, the clean your room, put your ipod away, take out the trash, I can’t live without my phone (it broke this week) age.
I watch, entranced, as on Silent Night she plays basically the entire melody–ringing and flinging ten bells, hand over hand, picking them up, setting them down, arranging and rearranging them in a precise manner, confident, relaxed. And I just think Wow, we really underestimate teenagers.
I mean, sheesh.
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