An Update on the Magster

The poor Magster.  Between her sister's birthday and dance competitions, La Nina's been hogging blog space for two months now and the Magster's been in the shadows.  So it's time to change that.  

Today the Magster and I had to turn in homework.  With her, homework is always an adventure because she never completes assignments exactly as instructed.  She puts her own twist on it.  Without a doubt, her version is always better than the planned one.  

Today was perhaps the best.  I left her to make a collage from recycled material.  I gave her a card board box as background, some magazines and some old newspapers.   Then I left the room to go take a shower.  When I came back, she'd found some masking tape and had created a "reading chair" using the box.  She'd decorated it presents (the rewards she gets every time she reads 100 books), ice cream scoops (the tracking method they use to count the books she's read) and  a blond girl smiling.  It was so darn clever, I couldn't tell her she did anything wrong.  So, we took pictures of it and turned it in.  

Then she proceeded to draw a picture of her favorite song-  Love Story by Taylor Swift. For those not in the know, it's a Romeo and Juliet story with a happy ending.  Maggie drew a picture of a prince and a princess in a castle looking at each other through windows.  Then she drew herself outside the castle watching them. I printed off the lyrics to the song and read them to her and she added a garden and a balcony.   She was supposed to draw a picture of her favorite book, "There's a Wocket in my Pocket."  But again, it was so much better, that I improvised.  I counted reading the lyrics as reading a book and we turned her picture into a book report.  (Sorry no photo of this one.)

I hope she never simply sticks to an assignment when she has a better idea.  Success in life usually comes when you operate outside of the box.  I hope she always maintains this creativity and confidence in doing things her way.  Luckily her teacher was an art major and she totally appreciates Maggie's meanderings.  Heaven help us, when we hit the teacher who doesn't!