As a homeschooling family, we are always on the alert for teachable moments – those opportunities to take a situation and use it to hammer home a point.  I’m sure my education department professors would have a fit about my definition for a teachable moment, but there it is.

Anyway, remember how Tess was enamored with toilet paper for a while?  Enamored, I should say, with using copious amounts of it?  Well, now she’s at the other end of the spectrum and, God Night Irene! it is driving me mad.  Here’s the thing, I know she’s just too busy to bother with it all.  She can barely take the time to pull her pants back up because she has things to do for crying out loud!  And I get that. But seriously, how long does it take to attend to the TP? She is simply not listening to my admonitions to be on top of it all. 

Or, so I thought.

As we made our way to a friends house this morning (thank you AGAIN Gail, for taking the maurading horde.  You’re a blessing to me!), we discussed our plans for the trip to California.  Max, who had discussed geysers at length with Grandpa last night, asked if we could see THE geyser (Old Faithful) on our way.  This led to more in depth questioning and explanations about thermal geysers, mud pots and the like.  I described Yellowstone and all it’s wonders and said,

“And some of the geysers are really, really stinky.”

Max: “Why?”

Tess: “Because they didn’t wipe.”

And bam!  There was my teachable moment!  She HAS been listening all along and she made a connection in my statement so, I did what any fine educator would do.

“THAT’S RIGHT. Good job Tess.”