Be Mine

Penny's homework this week (and next, though she's already finished it) was to fill out a workbook by writing one nice thing about each of her classmates. When everyone's is done, the workbooks will be taken apart and reassembled into little Valentine booklets for each kid.

Which I think is a cute idea. I seem to remember her kindergarten class doing something similar at some point, and that, looking through the book that came home with Penny, that most of the kids seemed to be picking from the same 3-4 "example" compliments. My favorite was almost a non-sequitur, for the age group: "Penny is a good citizen."

Apparently, they're left to devise their own compliments this year. Matt, supervising the effort yesterday, reported to me that Penny was using the exact same formula for just about everyone: "<Name> has <cool [boy] | pretty [girl]> eyes and nice skin."

Which made me fall over with the giggles. Skin? Really? At least she wasn't defaulting to: "<Name> is very nice."

This morning in the car, she was telling me about it, herself. She thought it was silly that the list of classmate names had her own name on it, since she wasn't going to write one for herself! (That wacky teacher, printing out 20 or so identical lists, instead of tailoring each list specifically for each kid!)

"Hey!" she said brightly, "I could cut my name out and put it on your list!"

"Um, I guess you could."

"It could be your and Daddy's homework. No, just yours. Daddy would say something silly."

"Daddy's a pretty silly guy."

"Yeah. But he'd write something that wasn't even about me!" I was about to protest this, but she continued. "Like, I like to give Penny zerberts!"

I had to admit that it did sound like the sort of thing Daddy would say. And that she was right that the statement wasn't actually about her, even though she was in it -- which is a pretty sophisticated nuance, I thought, for a six-year-old to be able to grasp.

So much for my nascent thoughts of starting a new Valentine's Day family tradition.