Three Year Old Gideon

 

The threes have begun. I put this on facebook, a couple of days ago:

Today in homeschool the 6 oldest homeschool kids had to define mischief. None of them could come up with a definition off their heads. I suggested that 3 yr old Gideon is a good definition. They laughed and then Gideon spent the rest of the school day making mischief. First he pooped his pants, took off his underwear in the back bathroom and then went and sat on Arwen's bed. When that was all cleaned up and we were back to lessons, he stole Susan's backpack, went into her room, pulled out all of her flash cards, mixed them all up, ripped their boxes to shreds and peed on her bed, then he knowing that he would be in trouble, he hid on Joseph's bed (top bunk) and ate two packs of Joshua's gum-- up on the bed to hide from Gideon. We noticed that Gideon was missing when we could not find Susan's backpack which had been set next to my feet. I cleaned up the backpack and pee mess while everyone else hunted for Gideon. He had to sit on the couch in time out until the end of the school day, expect that he kept getting up to tease the baby. At the end of the day, when we let him free, he climbed up onto the table and danced all over the 1,000 piece puzzle that the kids have been putting together. Now everyone knows how to define mischief.

And then today Gideon brought me an easy reader national geographic book about rocks and minerals. I read the first two or three sentences when he said, "no, no," flipped the book over, pointed to the books advertised on the back and named them, "Snakes, Penguins," and he also pointed to the sharks book, but did not know the name of that one. Then he turned the book around, pointed at the large purple geode on the cover and said, "It's a monster." I looked a little closer and thought that it could look like a mouth with a whole bunch of teeth. Anyway, he clearly did not want to read about rocks, he wanted monsters or other dangerous animals.