Friday, March 7, 2008

being smart is always cool

pooka has been very interested in sacagawea lately. i'm not sure how it started, but when it started was two weekends ago. (she has seen night at the museum, but not recently, that i know of.) on the way to sam's we got on the subject and i quickly exhausted my knowledge of her role in the lewis and clark expedition. unfortunately, we had already been to the library and missed our opportunity to get more reliable information.

the next day, we looked her up on the internet and pooka couldn't get enough. i'm not entirely sure if it was a sincere interest in the historical figure or just delight at being with me for some one-on-one time.

at any rate, the next weekend we made sure to take another trip to the library expressly for the purpose of checking out some books on sacagawea. we got two, and have spent the past week reading them. (history is not my strong suit, but turns out, i did a pretty good job recollecting the story.) did you know that she was just 16?

fridays are show and tell days for pooka. this week's theme letter was 's', which dovetailed perfectly with her recent fascination. did she want to show off her sacagawea dollar coin? don't be silly, mom! "i want to show my slinky, like i said right when i first got it at reagan's birthday party!"

a slinky, of course! why would you want to show something interesting that the other kids might not already know about or have seen? choose something that every kid probably has at home. i don't remember doing show and tell when i was little, but as a geeky mom, i would choose the new and unusual item over the run-of-the-mill toy everytime.

but then again, i never was popular in school.