By: Elaine Martin
The sight and sound of a school bus making its rounds through our neighborhood can make my mind go in so many different directions. I remember throwing myself onto my parents’ bed when I wasn’t yet old enough to follow my big brother onto the fantastic yellow bus to school. A few years after that, I can recall the butterflies dancing in my tummy as it was finally my turn to board the giant vehicle for myself. Why do I get the fuzzy memory of seeing my mom dancing as I was being driven away?
I can recall nursing my first baby, Sally, on those cold winter mornings and hearing the bus roar past our home and listening to the, “beep, beep, beep” as it reversed to pick up a late-running student. I remember whispering a silent promise that until she embarked on her own journey onto the giant bus, I would be the best teacher I could be for her.
Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, and Guess How Much I Love You were among the books nestled in a huge basket next to the rocking chair. I hung ABCs posters in her room, stuck foam letters on the bathtub, and placed a barnyard complete with animal sounds in the living room to ensure she would be more brilliant than Einstein. My mental checklist was being marked off daily, and I was giving myself gold stars every day for my awesome “teaching” skills.
All that changed around the time baby #2 was soon to arrive. My body was aching for extra rest, so Sally was now learning from her new best friends, the Teletubbies. Television and VHS tapes were watched while I closed my eyes next to her on the couch. I was patting myself on the back (and huge belly) for creating this wonderful environment.
At her yearly check-up several weeks after this TV relationship had started, I proudly informed our doctor that Sally knew her colors. We had read a rainbow book numerous times and talked about the hues constantly. When the doc pointed to the apple painted on the wall and asked what color it was, Sally proudly answered, “Po.” WHAT? The doc then pointed to purple grapes and asked the same question. Sally replied, “Tinky Winky.” COME AGAIN? My kid had just replaced the names of colors with the names of the multi-colored PBS mythological alien species! Red-faced, I quickly grabbed her immunization record and left to die of embarrassment safely in my own home.
Before I could create a spreadsheet or flow chart diagram to map out my new “Elaine’s Plan of Excellent Learning,” Hattie was born. Life moved at lightning speed at that point, so my rich learning environment was put on hold…or, so I thought. Those first few months, I did not have lots of extra time to develop a specific or planned life lesson for Sally, but I saw her learning. She was feeding her baby dolls the way I was feeding my own baby. Barbie, Curious George, and Polly Pocket were washed in a toy bathtub while I was bathing Hattie. When Daddy got home from work, he casually overlooked my oven cooked dinner and went instead to Sally’s Play-doh cookies lovingly baked in her plastic kitchen.
I became the student as I finally realized what was happening. In my quest to shove information in my child’s head, I had totally neglected the most important part of education – to feed her heart and imagination. Our daily life evolved from a stressed-out mom’s rigid routines into fun family adventures.
Weekly trips to story time at the library became magical. We sang songs, played with puppets and felt boards while laughing with new friends. Books came alive when the librarian read them with her funny, different voices. The book shelves seemed to burst with possibility of castles, talking pigs, and magical lands far away. Because I never wanted to limit their dreams, their book bags would be stuffed. I can still picture my girls dragging their overflowing bags to the checkout.
I used a staple gun to secure a colorful plastic tablecloth onto our scarred kitchen table. Glitter, glue, stickers, dull scissors, markers, paint, buttons, pipe cleaners, and construction paper were pulled out constantly to create inventions or roly poly houses. You can be certain my kitchen floor was often sticky, but great minds were working hard above the mess.
Screams of joy would bounce off the walls when I got out a special box…the clothespins! These small but sacred items would be used to hang bed sheets from the ceiling fan to be tucked around sofa cushions. Adding kitchen chairs and lots of creativity, we would construct the most epic forts that transformed the room into something of their imagination.
My guinea pig, first-born Sally is currently in her senior year of high school. She now passes the school bus on the road as she drives herself and her sisters to school. While I know she is still learning in school, I’m thankful that she and her sisters also carry something special with them in addition to their backpacks – an adventurous and creative spirit to take them wherever they want to go.