For a week or two every summer, my brother, sister and I were shipped off to the wilds of Little Rock, Arkansas to visit my Mom's mother, Grandma Noonie. Grandma Noonie lived high rise for "mature adults" and we were often the only children in the building. My grandmother was a sweet, loving woman with a warm smile, frequent hugs, and a never ending supply of Twinkies and Yoohoos. She was, however, at a loss as to how to entertain children. Plus, we interfered with her scotch and Camel consumption. Her real name was Mildred, and though it's never been confirmed, I'm quite sure the nickname "Noonie" had something to do with her getting the party started long before noon. I have no doubt she adored us. Well, at least she adored the idea of us, but

Small Children+Small Apartment=Spilled Scotch and ashtrays.

So, Grandma would scoot us out the door right after lunch, and we were on our own until dinner.

What to do?

Well, pushing every button on the elevator was a particular favorite afternoon activity.
The old "ring and run" doorbell trick was a winner, too...except the elevator was so darn slow that we were caught more often than not.
We would also spend hours in the outdated basement gym trying to figure out how to use this:

There was also a small lap pool that no one ever seemed to use. Perfect for 3 totally unsupervised kids to splash around in for a while.

My favorite part of Grandma summers, though, had to do with the stack of books next to Grandma's bed. Oddly, all of her books had the the covers torn off. I now know that No Cover meant the books were a tad "scandalous", but as the time I just thought that Grandma Noonie was a bit rough with her reading. These missing cover books were bodice rippers with titles like "Tender Torment" and "Sweet Savage Love".

 Before being shooed out of the door I would grab a couple of Grandma's forbidden books to take out to the pool. Certainly these books were not suitable for children, but they were pretty tame by today's standards. There weren't really any explicit naughty bits and parts, just euphemisms for naughty bits and parts.  I don't think I had any idea what it meant when the main characters "succumbed to their forbidden desires".  I hadn't a clue as to what a desire was, let alone a forbidden one. But I knew that I wasn't supposed to be reading the books, which made them all the more enticing.

The summer I was 8 was especially memorable. I was a precocious reader with a curious mind, and I was excited to get started on some of Grandma's smutty literature. I grabbed the top 2 books from her stacked and ran out to the pool. The pool was empty, as always, and I preferred to read while my brother and sister played happily in the shallow end. I took a long sip of a cold, chocolate-y YooHoo and cracked the first book open to Chapter1.

Ahhh, bliss.

Very, very short lived bliss.

I did not sleep a wink for the rest of my stay in Little Rock that summer. For that matter, I don't think I slept a wink for the remainder of the summer.

Why?

Well, here are the books that were at the top of Grandma Noonie's stack:

or what I like to call:

THE WORST POSSIBLE BOOKS AN 8 YEAR OLD COULD EVER, EVER READ.

It took me a long time to get over those two books. For a while I thought the Manson Family was camped out in the woods behind my house, or  that I was going to start getting visitations from the dead. I was a little girl who already had plenty of typical childhood fears, but this took them to a whole new level.

But, it does explain my penchant for the darker side of literature. I love the creepy, the macabre, and the unexplainable. A good murder mystery or ghost story is right up my alley. The darker, the better. Which is why I LOVE Myths and Fairy Tales. These tales are filled with all of the elements that make for wonderful stories: good and evil, frightening problems, flawed characters. There is a richness to these stories that allows one to read them over and over again, and to find discover something new with each reading. There is a reason these stories have been around for so long.

I am not advocating scaring the wits out of young children. Believe me, nightly visions Charles Manson from "Helter Skelter" and Jack Torrance from "The Shining" were not healthy for little Amanda. But dealing with scary,dark subjects through the safety of these stories is healthy. Making kids feel safe is my job as a teacher and a mother. But no one should be sheltered from tough emotions. Children need to feel scared, angry, and sad. And learning to handle these not so fun feelings is essential for both children and adults. Myths and fairy tales allow us to deal with these emotions, but at a safe distance.

 Because of this, sanitized versions of fairy tales and myths are not for me. Child-friendly is one thing, totally cleaned up, shiny happy endings are another. In class, we have been reading "Pandora's Box" for several weeks. We have read and watched videos of several different versions. What were the evils in Pandora's Box? Greed, jealousy, anger, sadness, sickness, poverty, and death, just to name a few. As I researched appropriate videos for kids (because, believe me, Pandora's Box brings up a lot of less than kid friendly material), I also ran across some positively sanitary Pandora stories. In one cleaned up version the box was filled with Frowny faces and a Smiley face. Really? Not for these students. They have loved talking about the evils released into the world. We've had terrific discussions about what each one of these "evils" looks like. What is jealousy? What is sadness? Is there a difference between sadness (in some versions) and despair (in other versions)? In some Pandora stories, these evils take on some pretty monstrous forms. Some versions of the myth started with the story of Prometheus. Zeus sent the box to Pandora to punish Prometheus for stealing fire for humans. He also punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having a bird of prey devour his liver over and over and over each day. Now that's dark.

These students have totally embraced this story. They were super excited to watch a Lego stop-animation version of it on Monday. So excited, that they were inspired to make their own Lego/Play-Do stop-animation film.

Here they are, building sets and characters:

Epimethius and Pandora's House

The Box

"Disease"

 

"Death"

Writing our own version of Pandora's Box on the board

 And here is the finished product, written and directed by Annabella, Bo, Gabriel, Max, Tani and Zoe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-QcK8XUYdo

We hope to add dialogue this week!

In other not-so-dark-and-scary news...

We finished this much loved book:

and started this one:

A couple of students wrote in their journals about what it would be like to have their own pet dragon:

Some continued to type their animal reports (hooray! Those who have not finished are all in the final draft stage!):

We all rocked on our spelling this week:

We explored a tricky mystery box:

Bo shakes...

Tani shakes...

Max shakes...

Annabella records the guesses.

A little hangman to find the answer!

DARTH VADER!(pumpkin push-ins)

Our first Cooking Club was a huge success thanks to Zoe and Gabriel. BIG thanks to Ms. Pamela for driving!
First, our smoothie orders were taken by the chefs.We had to choose between several delicious fruits and vanilla or chocolate soy milk. It was so much fun to build our own healthy drinks!

The chefs at work making custom smoothies.

Here's to ya!

Mmmmm...yummy!

The lovely Roxy and Erin worked alongside our chefs.

"Here ya go, Annabella!"

Thumbs WAY up!

Smoothies weren't the only treat this week. We had one of our old friends from last year come to visit on Wednesday. Welcome back, Jakob. It was great having you visit!

Even when you leave Hirsch, it is always in your heart!