Like Mother, Like Son

Erin: How was your day at school, Will?
Will: Fine.
Erin: What did you work on with Mrs. T.?
Will: Reading.
Erin: What did you read?
Will: A book.
Erin: Tell me about your book.
Will: I can't remember.

More often than not, Will answered my open-ended questions about school with as few words as possible. I found his responses perplexing because if I ask him questions about anything except school - even academic topics - he can talk at me for hours. Will loved his teachers, classmates, and the majority of subjects they covered during his first grade year, so I suspect his tendency toward sharing minimal information may have had to do with the exhaustion he felt at the end of the day.

Because Will wouldn't/couldn't provide me with a complete picture of first grade, I did my best to fill in the blanks by reading through all of the notes and work sent home in Will's folder and checking in regularly with Will's teachers. I hadn't grasped, however, the significant amount of writing Will had been doing in class until, on the last day of school, his folder came home overflowing with more than 40 single-page stories, essays, and reports he'd written over the course of the semester.

I started skimming through Will's writing, and just as my mom had laughed out loud when she read my 4th grade piece, "A Day at the Beach", I laughed out loud when I read what Will had written.

Why, you ask?

Because 24 of the 40 or so pieces had been written about the weather. Will focused primarily on cold weather, ice, and snow (specifically blizzards), but he also wrote about the summer heat. (After extreme weather conditions, additional topics included becoming a cowboy, playing baseball, and waterskiing with his grandpa.)

It seems as though I may have passed my desire to write about the weather - although he seems to focus on a different season than I do - on to my eldest. Like mother, like son.

Blizzards
By Will Ferris

Blizzards are powerful winter storms. Sometimes they are strong enof (enough) to cancle (cancel) flits (flights) and close roads. Blizzards happen when warm air colapes (collapses) with cold air. This is called a front. It it is cold enof (enough) it can freeze in a Blizzard. Blizzards are freezing cold. And that's what I know about Blizzards!

Unlike his mother, however, Will - cheerful optimist that he is - writes about the season he clearly loves, rather than the season he can barely survive.