Confess: A Limerick by Susanna

My daughter wrote this limerick, unaided, for a fourth-grade class assignment.

There once was a girl named Bess
Who didn't like to confess.
What happened to her
No one knew for sure.
Would you like to take a guess?

The Mystery Container

"I got the Mystewy Containew!" Michael will shout on occasion, when I pick him up from preschool. Each child gets a turn in the rotation to take the container home and bring it back the next day with something in it. The child gives the class three clues and they see if anyone can guess what it is.

Earlier in the year, Michael had generated a typical set of clues. "It's brown and has a tail, it swings through trees, and it eats bananas."

But recently he's become more crafty. See if you can guess the object from one of my favorite set of clues:
1. You can't drive it.
2. It doesn't have wheels.
3. But you can read it!

Gotta Hand It To Ya

"Michael, please take your things into the house," I said as we climbed out of the car, my arms already laden with water bottles, shoes, and a pile of school art, papers occasionally fluttering to the ground.

"I onwy have two hands," he said, as he grappled with three items. Last month he had pointed out, "You onwy have two hands, too. Because in ouw famiwy, we onwy have two hands."

Now he was waxing philosophical. "What if we had six hands?" He likes to speculate, and the more ridiculous, the better.

"What if we had six hands?" I asked.

Nate pitched in. "If we had six hands, we could do lots of things," he said.

"Like what?" I pressed.

"Like we wouldn't have to use our mouths to carry things."

Silver Linings

"I see bwack and white cwouds," Michael said, as we climbed into the car, the two boys and me.

I put it into gear and looked at the mottled sky. "You're right," I agreed.

"Wain comes fwom the bwack cwouds, but not the white cwouds," he said. I had pointed out a few weeks ago that I thought it would rain because the clouds looked pretty dark. Now he was refining the concept one point further. "God makes it wain fwom the bwack cwouds."

Nathan was thoughtful. "They're only shadows," he said. "The black clouds are the ones that make it rain, but they're only shadows. They have too much water in them, so then they rain."

It surprises me how much a three-year-old and five-year-old think things through. I'd never thought about why some clouds were bright and some dark. "I think you're right," I said. "The sun can't shine through those clouds because there's more water in them." I suppose water vapor can vary widely in density. "How did you know that?" I asked, always curious about their sources.

"I don't know. I just knew it," he said.

These boys. I learn so much from them. What will happen when they're teens?