Learning by Magic

When my brother and I were very young, my dad was deployed to Korea with the Air Force for 18 months, leaving my mom at home in a new city with an 18-month-old and a four-year-old.  A few days after my dad left, the neighbors came by to introduce themselves.  Their names were Jim and Coral and they were nearly the same age as my grandparents.  They had children about the age of my mom and dad, and grandchildren near the age of my brother and me, but they all lived out of town.  Jim had just been discharged from the Air Force after severing his index finger on duty.  They were unable to reattach it.  He offered to come over the next morning and have coffee with my mom  and help watch us kids.

Over the next weeks and months, Jim came over every morning.  He always greeted my brother with,  “Hey, Buddy!” and a hug. Before long, my brother started calling him Buddy.  He has been Buddy to us ever since.  Being a former engineer, Buddy became the one who could fix anything.  If one of my brother’s toys broke, Buddy fixed it.  Flat tire on the wagon; Buddy fixed it.  All my brother had to do was toddle up with his tiny hand outstretched and ask, “Buddy fix?” and Buddy fixed it.

After going to a little carnival one weekend, my brother came home with a goldfish he had won at a booth.  My mom  bought a bowl and some marbles for the bottom and we poured the goldfish into his new home.  The next morning, the goldfish was “sleeping” upside down.  My brother pulled Buddy into the house as soon as he entered the door and dragged him  over to the bowl.  “Buddy fix?”, he asked, his bright blue eyes staring up at Buddy in complete trust.  Buddy told him he needed to take the fish home to “fix it” and disappeared with the bowl.  About an hour later, he brought the fish back, magically all better.  By the afternoon, the fish was “sleeping” again.  Once again, Buddy “fixed” it.  By the next morning, we had a “sleeping” fish for the third time.  Buddy took the fish away to “fix”, worked his magic, and returned with it all better.  At this point, he quietly pulled my mom aside and told her that the people at the pet store had explained that you have to put de-chlorination drops in the fish’s water, and handed her a small bottle of drops.  The fish didn’t “fall asleep” again.  We had been lucky to have such a wonderful friend and a pet store nearby!

So, fast forward about 35 years.  We would really like for Beth to understand where food comes from.  Being four seems the perfect age to start a garden and teach her how to take care of the plants and how the plant life cycle works.  My mom has been wanting a garden and Beth stays with my mom three days a week, so this seemed like the perfect project for them to work on.  My mom went out and bought a big metal water trough and bags of potting soil.  She and Beth chose some seeds to plant - carrots, green beans, and basil.  They planted their garden in August and started caring for it.  The plants were doing beautifully and it wasn’t long until they had a virtual forest of plants growing all over the trough.  The beans were crawling up the trellis my mom had placed there, and the basil and carrots were growing daily.

Every day, my mom took Beth out to check on the garden.  She taught her how to check the soil for moisture and how to give the plants a drink when the soil was dry.  They pulled any weeds that tried to grow and sprayed the leaves with organic bug deterrent when something started eating the plants.  Beth took her job very seriously and took excellent care of the plants.

Somehow, though, although the carrots were growing tall, leafy tops, there were no orange carrots underneath.  After a few months, my mom checked them to see if they were ready for Beth to harvest and found tiny, little half-inch carrots at the bottom of 18 inch stalks.  Thinking quickly and remembering Buddy and the goldfish, my mom waited until Beth was at preschool, and drove to the nearby grocery store.  She bought a bunch of organic carrots with the leafy tops attached, hurried home and buried them in the garden where the failed carrots had been.  When Beth got home from school, my mom  invited her to pick “her carrots”.  Beth was delighted to see how her hard work had paid off!

My mom may have cheated a little, but to us, it was more important that Beth have the experience of working hard and being successful at something.  She will try even harder the next time we give her a project, because she will feel that she can be successful.  One of our biggest goals as parents (and educators) is to instill in our children a desire to try hard, persevere through to the end of a project, and enjoy being successful and learning as they go.  Sometimes it just takes a little magic to make that happen.