Kids We Love: Jackson and the Good Night boys
This February, Buddings is all about LOVE (like always, actually…), and while Friday afternoon’s Good Night class is about falling in love with the moon, this season, I have been surprised and delighted to have my heart completely swept away with the ways this class has affected my Big Kids.
Fact: The child’s champion of the night is the moon.
The moon watches over the boy’s sleep in I Took the Moon for a Walk by Carolyn Curtis and Allison Jay. The beautiful images and rhythmic poetry that used to send Jackson, Carter, and uncountable other sleepy children for their own dreamy wanderings, is now a class lesson plan!
Just so you know, this is not a scientific class. Mysticism. Myths. Music… mmm Magic. (Brought to you by the letter “M”.)
Flying into February with the Big Buddings Boys
For whatever reason (flexible care is like a box of chocolates…), my Friday afternoon kids have been primarily boys. Jackson, Maxim and Mattis, have been regulars, and Rolland, Carter, and Mason, and even our summer buddy Ziyad, among others, have dropped in for classes and fieldtrips. A couple charming girls, too, but mostly boys.
I have been so lucky!
To introduce the phases of the moon, we watched The Girl Who Married The Moon, where the moon’s wife wants to help him light the world, and accidentally gets one of his beautiful masks stuck to her face. We made our own moon masks, but Jackson didn’t want to wear his, because he was afraid it would get stuck.
Jackson is a newly-minted Big Kid. It’s just this season that he’s started resisting his afternoon nap, and his bright-eyed curiosity, plus Maxim’s sweet sensitivity, have coloured my whole month.
I showed the boys pictures of the moon in every colour, and a dance party’s worth of moon songs, and was constantly surprised (and delighted) with their impressions. For example: Blue Moon, Yellow Moon, Pink Moon, Harvest Moon, Moon River, Bad Moon Rising, and Man on the Moon.
Which do you think the Big Boys like?
Jackson doesn’t like Bad Moon Rising, because it’s too scary. Maxim thinks Honey Trees’ Becky Filip covering Moon River is “the most beautiful,” and they unanimously agree that R.E.M. is the best, especially the part where Michael Stipe jumps onto the running board of a moving semi.
When they pull up at a truck stop, instead of St. Peter’s, the singer jumps off, and Jackson says “Where did the truck go?”
Actually, the truck was their favourite part. Omg. They are adorable…
We also went on another fieldtrip (there are some pictures below), and last week, after playing their favourite songs and videos again, I tried to move things into the second phase of the Good Night program: Nocturnal Animals. We didn’t get far, though.
I’m away this week, so class is canceled. Ehlssie’s covering my shift, and I know she’ll have fun with these awesome Big Boys. We’ll be back in action on Mar. 3, when it’s all about the super powers animals have to combat the nighttime conundrum: how to “see” in the dark.
