Under the Table with Your Kids
The retired teacher we met on our train ride through the Royal Gorge near Cañon City, Colorado, told me that her favorite kind of children to teach were the ones who were “squirrely.” I was perplexed at her definition of squirrely at first. The first definition in the urban dictionary is mildly insane. That’s not what she meant. She meant wiggly.
This retired teacher beamed in her memories of her “squirrely” kids. She said that if they crawled under the table, she crawled under the table with them. She said that during reading groups, she sat between the two “squirreliest” kids and gave them backrubs while they read. “They’d read for hours, as long as I rubbed their backs,” she said.
I don’t know about hours, but I thought I’d pass her story along to you — just in case you need to crawl under a table or give some backrubs today.
I have sweet memories of crawling under a table with our own kids. We didn’t actually do that during “school” time, but rather during play time when we threw blankets or sheets over the table to make a tent. I only wish I had thought of “doing school” under there. How fun!
Isn’t it wonderful that the children in that teacher’s class were celebrated for how God made them! After all, each of us is different, but in one profound way we are all the same:
God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:27
Thanks for the reminder to have more fun with my children. I think it is going to be rainy here tomorrow so we just might throw a blanket over the table and do school under there.