The Spry Ones Are In My Bubble

Edited May 2019: We were a part of a wonderful Classical Conversations community for the first eight years of our home education journey. Now, due to poor state leadership and questionable corporate business practices, our family has elected to “consciously uncouple” from our association with the organization and we cannot recommend any others get involved at this time. 

I learned two things about youngsters, the wee, spry whippets, today.

One, my kids are not the only ones who are completely unable to tell a joke.

During our presentations for Classical Conversations today, one gal showed the class her picture of Zacchaeus. (Zacchaeus was a wee little man and wee little man was he!) (Now, tell me honestly you knew how to spell Zacchaeus. You didn’t? Me, neither.)

In her picture Zacchaeus was hanging out in a tree, throwing money from the branches in his repentance of his tax collecting ways.

My students wanted to know why he was in a dollar tree. Then a five-year-old genius announced: “Isn’t that so funny?! The Dollar Tree isn’t a tree at all!” and started laughing uncontrollably.

I kind of get it, but I really don’t. I have no idea why he laughed so hard. I’m glad he is a happy kid – and he made me feel there may be some hope for the development of humor in the girls. Who knows?

The second thing I learned is four-and-five-year-olds are no respectors of persons.

I’ve gotten kind of used to my own children petting my hair at random times. I’m ashamed to admit Dos and I actually walked through Ace hardware with her hands wrapped around my thigh in a bear hug last week.

In general, getting rubbed upon by others is not my favorite, but I have learned to be ok with my own children invading my personal space. I am not used to other people’s children getting all up in my grill, however.

We were practicing being spiders and testing our string webs to learn hunting, spider style. As I sat next to the string, four of the seven children in my class got so close to me if they were capable of producing body odor, I would have been experiencing  major aromatic angst!

They were sitting on me, leaning on me, and resting their heads against my cheek.

Now, really, enough is enough. I wonder if homeschoolers are lacking in an understanding of personal space? Or if this is just an early childhood issue? Who knows? I just know I’m outside of my touch comfort zone.

But I think I’ll survive. Especially since they’re not smelly and they like the Dollar Tree.