About a month ago Link came home from school with an eraser. This in itself is not unusual because pencils and erasers are common implements in an elementary school. The eraser itself wasn’t unusual either. It was just one of those wedge-shaped pencil top erasers. But Link displayed it for me like he’d won a grand prize. By “displayed” I mean “shoved in my face about two inches from my eyeballs.” After moving the eraser to a distance where I could see something other than a large blur, I was able to see why Link was so excited. He’d drawn a little face on the eraser. Link was very pleased with his little eraser man. As soon as we got home, Link combed the house for more erasers so he could draw faces on them as well. I figured this was a harmless activity, so I let him do it.
A few days later Link was with me in Staples and he saw a whole pack of brand new erasers in various colors. He used some of his money to buy the erasers. Upon our arrival at home, these too acquired faces. They joined their brethren in a little jar. Several times Link pulled these erasers out to use as part of his elaborate games. he discovered that they fit almost perfectly over the circular knobs of Duplo blocks. This was incredibly cool because Link uses Duplos as game boards all the time. I still didn’t pay much attention to the erasers.
Then one day, during homework time, I realized what an asset these little eraser buddies could be. Link had a spelling worksheet. It was one of those with several columns of words in one corner and the rest of the page is filled with tasks to accomplish using the provided words. Words are not Link’s friends. This kind of sheet can be miserable for us both. But on this day he had selected three eraser buddies. They stood on the columns of words. As the words were used and crossed off, the little eraser people could move forward. Link was busy trying to see which eraser would finish his column first. Naturally there were sound effects involved. I listened for a moment. Apparently the words did not just get crossed off, they exploded. And the eraser people had all been christened with Link’s name and the names of a couple of his friends. My son found a way to play with friends while doing his homework.
The next day Link had a math paper. It was just rows of problems to accomplish. He ran for his erasers. I expected him to take the column approach, but that was not complex enough. He drew a game board that wended its way down the paper. Each math problem had its own square. Then Link got a dice and began to play. As the erasers passed over the math problems, they had to complete them. I listened to Link cheer when one of his friends got stuck doing a problem. I heard sounds of dismay when the Link eraser had to do one. Not only were Link’s friends playing with him at homework time, now he had them doing the work too.
Obviously this kind of solution won’t work in school. It is not efficient. One math paper can take 90 minutes because of all the drawing and then the embellishments that the game inevitably picks up. It is also noisy. There is cheering. There are explosions. There are cries of dismay. Sometimes there are engine noises. At the end of the game, the paper has picked up so many extraneous pictures, that the answers are hard to read. I wonder what his teacher thinks about these papers. Can he see the enormous creative energy that Link pours into these games? But as for me, I love the little eraser buddies. They make homework time a happy place.