One of our literature assignments for our week on ancient India was The Story of little Babaji,
a really cute, charming story. Above is a photo of a worksheet my 3 youngest students did for this book, from Tapestry of Grace student pages.
The story was cute, fun to read and somehow ingredients for a very silly time at my house. If you can picture the scene; me sitting at the dining table reading to all 5 kids- and reading it face out- you know, how teacher's read the book so all the kids can see the illustrations?--which means, you are reading upside-down or sideways...
Well, I got to the sentence that goes something like this..."he peered around the tree..." and from my vantage-point, upside-down...the word looked like 'peed' to me. In a flash, I am thinking to myself..."alright, no more weird ancient India stories...this is ridiculous!" and mid-sentence I scrambled for an appropriate/genteel substitution. I couldn't come up with one that fast, so I settled on "he went to the bathroom around the tree" -realizing how awkward this was going to be...two of my students are 8 year old boys-don't you know!...
So, I'm wondering to myself what kind of strange superstitious ritual am I going to have to explain, and why oh why didn't I pre-read this ahead of time...
All of the kids utter shocked exclamations...and then, Meg says..."Mom, you read that wrong, it says 'peered'!" And, to my relief- as I looked at it right-side-up, it did indeed say 'peered'.
We all laughed our heads off for some minutes. Me, in relief.
Never a dull moment around here.