Jack labeling his block construction buildings on a photo of his town

Our grandson, Jack, visited with his dad for Washington’s birthday week to ski. However his dad, our son, was starting a new job that very week! So, we spent a lot of time with Jack, waiting for his dad to be finished with work so that we could all go skiing.

Note to encourage his dad to get ready to ski!

This was a week away from preschool for Jack who turned five last December. Well, really four days away from school, after the Presidents Day holiday.

I put out good quality paper in a 9 by 12 inch notebook, and pencils and pens, and colored pencils, and a variety of good quality markers. In the past, Jack has dedicated hours to drawing all kinds of games, animals, scenarios. He worked at the kitchen island most of the time. And, for the most part, I followed him. By that I mean, I made available what he asked me for; I was his secretary; I was his assistant.

He wanted to write a lot. When I showed him Swahili words for animals, he wanted to write them. (We had just returned from an epic and long dreamed of trip to Tanzania which I wrote about last month.)

Names of animals in Swahili …do you know them?

When he was getting antsy and wanted to go skiing, he wanted to write his dad notes about that. When he built a town of buildings that he knows, he wanted to label them on a photo/map of his town. When he wanted to design a stuffy for us to make, he wanted to draw step by step instructions.

Instructions for designing and sewing a ghost stuffy

In many ways, this was a week of school for me, with Jack being my teacher. I have written several blog posts about time with Jack. One post when he was around two years old and was living down the road during the pandemic. I was lucky enough to spend two days a week with him then. And just last fall, when I visited his school, A Child’s Place, in New Jersey and, again, was lucky enough to be able to work with him and some of his friends with natural materials.

So here he is again, star of the show. Making school for himself learning, practicing what he knows and stretching into new forms, inventing, building, writing, drawing, making all kinds of things.

And we did ski. And he is a good skier, mostly because of the year that he spent learning to ski when he was two, the year he lived in Vermont during the pandemic. So, during the week that they were here, I followed him down the mountain as well.