Keeping my mouth shut

Today, I spent the morning with Cameron at his school.  He has been talking about his art class all year long, so I was excited to see it.  The class was discussing artist Gustav Klimt, which floored me from the start.  My recollection of first grade art class definitely did not include raising your hand and answering questions with "He's an Austrian symbolist painter."  Cameron even raised his hand to volunteer that the bodies in Klimt's work were "mosaic."  He leaned over to me and whispered, "I was straining to remember the word at first, but then I remembered, 'Mosaic!  Like a Lego mosaic!'" 

I found the discussion of how to draw a realistic face fascinating, as I am unable to think about faces without thinking about my Dysmorphology course in grad school.  "What's the rule of the third eye?" asked the teacher.

"Ooooh!  The distance between your eyes is the same as the length of an eye!  So if you draw three eyes in a row and erase the middle one, that's the right distance between the eyes!" volunteered a student.

Silently I thought, "Well, unless you're hyperteloric . . ." and scanned the class, noting who might have made a more realistic self-portrait had they only been schooled in dysmorphology.

"And where do we draw the ears?"

"Imagine a straight line from the eye!"  came the answer.

Again, I reflected, "Yes, typically.  But of course the ears could be low-set.  Or posteriorly rotated."

It's a good thing I know how to keep my mouth shut.

Cameron's Klimt-inspired self-portrait was amazing and awaits only the "mosaic" body to be complete. 

In the classroom, Cameron showed me how he manages his own time, choosing the order in which he does his work.  I repeatedly had to remind myself that he gets his work done without his teachers nagging him, so I too should keep my mouth shut even though I wanted to tap his paper from time to time and say, "Cameron!  Pay attention!  Next problem!"  When I left at lunch time, he had completed his grammar work, his math work, his language work and his daily assignment.  His organizer still had a long list of work in it, though, and I feared that he'd never get it all done.  But, once again, the Montessori method works -- a few hours later, he hopped in the car and announced, "I got all of my daily work done and even finished all my weekly assignments ahead of time!"

So I'll just keep on keeping my mouth shut, and be happy that it works!