Model Student

My nine-year-old is at it again. Not only is the garden fully tilled thanks to his sharp-toothed shovel, but there is also a ditch at the center that he has made steadily deeper. The kid clearly loves a project.

From his menu board of fourth-grade activities, he plucked several tasks with surprising enthusiasm. I created a class of one on No Red Ink (middle school teacher perks) and started him off on nouns--the silly sentences had him cracking up that he even took screenshots of a few. "I don't know, maybe I can make something out of them later," he explained. When he caught sight of his sketch pad that his art teacher sent home, he borrowed my Sharpies to design some pretty intense robots.

He heard from his older brothers--a meme on Twitter, I think--that Sir Isaac Newton produced his best work while on quarantine. "I think I might, too," he said hopefully.

When evening hit, I peeked out the door, expecting to see him digging away. Instead, he was seated in a lawn chair with a book. The sun had started to go down, but he read as long as there was light in the sky. That's the spirit.