It's amazed me that the projects that the twins get allocated seem to always suit them perfectly. Evan would have had fun with Jordan's Book project but he totally loved the geekness of his Chair project. He was in heaven when we were out looking at chairs, testing them out and insisting that we took photographs of him in them. He even got up enough guts to go to the counter at Ikea and ask them for a catalogue for his project; his words not mine.
If I got Evan to write stories or draw, he would be reluctant. But give him a dismantled chair to assemble and his eyes light up like it was Christmas. Packrat and he spent a great load of time assembling the chair, messing around and pretending to paint the chair. The name of the game was to get as dirty as possible and paint on the most impossible bits of themselves. But the chair did look very cool after and Evan and Packrat did spend a great deal of time together pretending that they had carpentering skills.
Here are some stills that I've taken out of his project booklet chronicling what he did.
Because two projects are a lot to handle, I tried to do things that bridged both. That meant ordering and reading a book about the Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton. I'm big on getting them started on Enid Blyton, partially because of nostalgia but partially because I think there is a lot of cultural capital (post colonial though it may be) to be gained.
And because of that, when the chair Packrat and Evan built was dry, they thought that they would mutter a few magic words (I could have sworn I heard "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious " being mumbled) and turn the chair into a Wishing one. But as with the tooth fairy, the chair's magic powers come from the fairygodmother, me. So with a wave of my manic wand and a Bibbity Bobbety Boo, I turned the Ikea chair into a Wishing Chair complete with paper wings on their legs like the one in the book.
The other thing that Evan really likes to do is to explore. Jordan is happy to stay home and draw and look at her books. Evan, however, itches to be out of the house doing new things all the time. Everyday that he is not in school, he starts the day asking "Where are we going today?". He also knows to ask to go places, the zoo, Sentosa, the Bird Park, Takashimaya! On more than one occasion, he has started his sentences with "How I wish that we could go to..."
So, we took him seriously, gathered a bunch of local travel brochures, got him to cut up his wish list and stick it up on his wishing chair. On a side note, it is downright difficult to find a travel agent when we need one. I think it's because people book their holidays online and the travel agents that do exist, exist in Chinatown and other places too far for the crazy busy fairygodmother to get to.
Thankfully, the boy doesn't have lofty dreams of going to Caribbean islands and Disneyland. Most of his choices were local. He did say he wanted the Wishing Chair to take him to Penang. But since we've just got back from there, there wasn't a real need to put it on the again. And as much as possible, we will try and take him on as many of these adventures as possible. After all, his wanderlust does very much come from the both of us.
At the same time, we picked up a silly poem about a Table and a Chair having a conversation and while he has it memorised, he isn't as keen to recite that in class than to show off his Wishing Chair and talk about all the places he would like the chair to bring him if the chair were real.
I wish the chair was real too. I would totally use it. No ERP, no ridiculous Hello Kitty type traffic jams and no expensive fuel. And what's not to love about red/ pink flapping wings on each chair leg? To quote Dr Seuss,
“You're off to Great Places!That, is totally up ours and Evan's alley.
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”
0 comments:
Post a Comment