You know that moment?  That one single second when your child gets so animated about something and you just know that the excitement he is feeling that very second is the best feeling of the world?  As I parent I love to see that animation and excitement, knowing that as they grow they happen less and less.  My husband and I are always in awe of watching our children at those times where we plan and the boys just “let it go” and we surprise them with something.  It does not happen very often because both boys are “need to know” children and it is sometimes easier to tell them what is going on than deal with the constant questions over and over……

The Boys God Father gave them a stack of little books called “Pocket Classics”.  He read them as a young boy and it helped open the door to the truly great classics in reading.  My boys have been burning through them as most of them are around 70-100 pages and have pictures as well as an abbreviated story.

Quentin just had that animated moment and it had nothing to do with a video game, a field trip, a new toy or game…  It had to do with the lesson that he was doing!  I wish that I had gotten the moment on film.  It went something like this:

“MOM!!!  Oh my Gosh!!! ” (today of all days..being Halloween, he turned in his chair and about fell on the floor…) He proceeded to read to me about what happened in 1938 when Orson Welles read about the Alien invasion.  Then he said… “Mom!  it was out of the book War of the Worlds!  I read that!!!”  Arms flinging, smile from ear to ear, READING everything on the page!

Ok, two points here….  No more than 9 months ago we were giving up everything to get him reading the way he should.  The only word that he pronounced incorrectly on the whole lesson was “Hoax”  which I corrected and he then read correctly.  Second point was that he actually was excited about school work.  (of course it helps that the lesson was on aliens and something he had read but still)

Seriously, Never did I think that we would have this in schoolwork.  How could I describe my household to make you understand how much different our world is now than last June when we were trying our best to get through a page at a time of boring, mundane school work.  No matter what I did to make it interesting and exciting we were all stressed out and not having fun.  The conversations now flow easy and are fun!  The world has opened up to us and learning is now so easy!

As for the Odd part?  How odd that the lesson of that Orson Welles book fell today????  Spooky…..