Isaac's Journal

Last time I mentioned journals here, I was discouraged because Isaac had announced that he hated them. But then he came up with the idea of writing a manual for his favorite computer game. I was pretty sure we'd go back to complaints when his Starcraft Manual was done. I was wrong!

As soon as the Starcraft Manual was done, he wrote an exhaustive how-to-draw manual for every creature and object that appears in Starcraft.

Ever pessimistic, I was sure the happy days were ending once that manual was done.

But now he has moved on to cartooning. Inspired by Zebra and the stupid crocs in Pearls before Swine (and rather like Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner), he created Rat and Worm. Writing this cartoon delights him. He regularly produces pages of comic strips in his journal, chuckling to himself most of the time. He also likes to make copies of his journal pages on our printer and cut the copies into strips--you know, comic strips. I have many, many, many strips of comics stacked up in the kitchen and in the dining room and in the living room.

He and Eleanor have entrepreneurial plans to sell all of these strips once we get back to the US. Here Eleanor models the sandwich board they designed to advertise them.

Despite the extra paper floating around, I'm really happy about how much he loves his journal now. I've been trying to figure out what lessons I should learn about teaching my kids. The best I've come up with so far is: Get out of the way.

I know we're several months off, but I will have forgotten by then--check out these amazing Halloween candy math investigations are here.