His first report

Hunter has always loved learning. Since he was tiny he has been like a sponge constantly soaking up information and turning everything into a project or learning activity. True to his nature then it shouldn't have surprised me when he came running off the bus with a paper in hand to show me. "Mom, we get to do our first report on a desert animal, and I get to do one on a Scorpion!" he quickly continued, "We get to make a poster with facts and stuff, and then stand up and read it in front of the class!" I just smiled. Side note: I don't remember ever having to give an oral report as early as first grade? "Okay well it looks like it is due next week so you'd better get going on some research" I told him. "Yeah, I need to get some information maybe on the internet" he said as he threw his backpack into his room and headed for the computer. Love him. As with most things within about fifteen minutes he had absorbed some great facts about scorpions and was regurgitating them to me. We filled out the questions on the report page that he would be reading in front of the class. When it asked to describe what the animal looked like I suggested what he should write. "No Mom, let's put at the end of its tail it has a telson" he told me. "A telson?" "You know mom, the stinger, telson is the scientific name." "Yeah buddy I don't think anyone will know that so let's just put stinger." "Mom we have to use the scientific name because that is what it is really called." "Okay fine Hunter but then you have to put telson (stinger) so that people know what you are talking about." This led to using all scientific names for description of said scorpion. Thank goodness that his teacher knows him so well or she would probably think that I did his report for him. When I asked him if he would like a picture of a really cool scorpion climbing up a cactus or something he replied: "Actually mom I was thinking that we could do a diagram of a scorpion's body with arrows labeling the parts." Oh yeah, or that..I thought to myself. However since 1. I am NOT an artist ask anyone who has ever played Pictionary with me and 2. I definitely could not manage a cross section of a scorpion he had to settle for nice colored pictures printed of scorpions. Deke being the amazing dad he is, bought Hunter one of those scorpion under glass paperweights at Walgreens for him to pass around for all the kids to see a real scorpion after his presentation. This mornining at the breakfast table he was practicing what he was going to say. I have been thinking about him all day, wondering how it went and excited to hear about it.