RR and the Spider

We don’t get to hear much from RR about her school day. Sometimes we trick her by saying that we know she did X today and she’ll pipe up that she, ACTUWALLY, MAMA, did Y. She’s no fool, though, and we can only get away with that particular ploy every so often.

Yesterday we found a large spider doing some serious spidering on one of our bushes. She was cleaning up her web, folding it up and tucking it away and we stood and watched, late for everything. RR jostled around, trying to get closer, both fascinated and cautious. I’ve never seen a spider so industriously working before. So fast. You got the sense that she could spring out and spider you and you would open your mouth to scream and you’d be all webby.

Since we’ve been doing a lot of talking about barn spiders. We encouraged RR to check out the spider book at school and this evening at supper the words came spilling out. “And I looked in the books and there were five different books and we found the BARN SPIDER and the spider was so pretty and fuzzy her whole head was fuzzy! and then I did a picture of her and Callie and I talked about her and them I wrote a story about her and she has eight legs one two three four five six seven eight!”

Let there be no doubt that my child’s kindergarten experience is perfect for her so far. From being able to take 10 minutes to watch a spider taking in her web before school, to having a teacher who encourages curiosity and investigation, to the resources to draw and write about her discoveries. She is very lucky. We are very lucky. The barn spider is very lucky… that it didn’t try to spider me.