Funny answers

This morning Rachel and I read, "A Tree is Nice". I picked up a book from Scholastic back in the spring called "Caldecotts across the curriculum". Basically, it takes good children's literature and suggests lots of lesson plans and activities based on the books.

My plan for today was to read the book, have Rachel name 5 kinds of trees, draw a tree, and then bake leaf/twig cookies as per the book's instructions. (Don't worry, they're real cookies - just shaped like tree parts!)

We read the book after breakfast and went straight to tree-naming. Here were Rachel's 5 trees:

1. Evergreen (we narrowed this down to fir)
2. Aspen
3. Spruce
4. Maple
5. Pine

I then got a lesson from Rachel about how to tell a spruce tree from a fir tree based on the sharpness of their needles. Yes, Grandma Karen, you've finally found someone who likes all things botanical!

When I brought up the idea of drawing a tree, Rachel predictably burst into tears. "But I don't know HOW to draw a tree!" she wailed. I pointed out that trees have leaves and trunks and branches. When I asked her what kind of tree she wanted to draw, she suggested an apple tree. But she wanted to draw the apple tree with flowers, not apples. This brought fresh tears because she didn't know how to draw the flowers either.

In desperation, I googled "apple tree with flowers picture" and got this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/victor1805/3592496962/

It's a very nice pic with a bee visiting the apple tree. From that, Rachel got the idea to draw a butterfly visiting her apple tree. Too bad she burst into tears again because she thought she couldn't draw a butterfly.

In the end, I took out some paper and sketched her all the elements - leaf, flower, trunk, branches, and butterfly. My point was that if Mom could do it, Rachel could certainly do it. While I don't generally believe in talking down your abilities, it is fairly undisputed in our family that some of us have less artistic ability than others!

The plan is to run errands, and then do the tree drawing and cookies while Anna naps. We'll see how that goes.