Letting the imagination soar

In pre-school Katherine's best friend moved to New York. This was very traumatic. So she and her pre-school class started going on regular field trips to New York.

"Yup, we got on the plane and it went so fast and we walked around in New York and there was SO much people and then the plane brought us home."

One day in pre-school, she and all her classmates got up on the roof to fix it because it was leaking. She climbed up all by herself and her teacher handed her a hammer and she got that roof fixed. None of the other kids knew what to do but she knew all about fixing leaking roofs.

In Kindergarten, the field trips and extra-curricular activities calmed down. The field trips to New York were shelved and the roof didn't need fixing.

But in first grade there are a lot of interesting things happening again. She and her class went on a field trip a few weeks ago. They walked around their very urban neighborhood studying their community. Well, Katherine saw a lot of animals on that field trip, let me tell you. She saw a mama fox carrying its baby in its mouth. She saw a fat coyote. She saw a flying squirrel. She didn't know what kind of animal that was at first, but she called one of the mom volunteers over and asked her and the mom said it was a flying squirrel and weren't they so lucky to have seen one of those on the field trip. But the best animal she saw on that field trip, in the very urban neighborhood, was a tiger. And boy, was it ever cool to see that!

A little boy got lost on that same field trip. That was scary. But Katherine saved the day by finding him and escorting him back to the group! Thank goodness she was there for that!

Today, her big buddy from fifth grade came to visit again. Yesterday the big buddy's name was Flower. Today it was Daisy. At one point the big buddy's name was Chrysanthemum. Today, the big buddy brought strawberry ice-cream and after she and Katherine ate the ice-cream they ate lots of candy together. Double chocolate Kit-Kats, to be exact.

Wow. Imagine that.

I do imagine that. I go along with her on her field trips to New York and her sightings of tigers in the urban jungles of Los Angeles and her ice cream and candy parties with her big buddy who has flowery names because I love these adventures with her.

When I was six I had two imaginary friends, Seth and Turf. Seth was always well behaved and Turf was always naughty. I still remember what those boys looked like in my imagination. Seth was always very neatly dressed in shorts and a striped top and Turf was always dirty with chocolate smeared around his mouth.

Does your child tell you extraordinary stories? Do you go along for the ride?




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