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Thursday, January 30, 2025

I thought I did, I thought I did...

Today there was a copy of The Little Engine That Could in a "Little Free Library" we passed while out on a walk, so we took it home with us. On a very technical level, I believe that we have a copy of this book in our house somewhere, but I don't know where it is off the top of my head and I haven't read it to the kids in years so it's possible it didn't move with us...or...at any rate, we haven't read it for a long time.

But we read it today and then the kids wanted to get out one of our felt board games (that are typically reserved only for sacrament meeting, to keep them novel and entertaining on Sundays). The kids know the back side of this felt board because it's The Three Little Kittens and I sometimes sing that to them for a bedtime song, but I guess they've kind of been in the dark about the significance of the train part. 

Not that they haven't ever played with the trains—they definitely had—they just didn't realize they could have been retelling the specific story of The Little Engine That Could. My bad.

I thought I had read them this story. I thought I did. I thought I did. I thought I did...


But for sure I have now.

Interestingly, we looked at The Little Engine That Could in class on Tuesday, and one student did kind of a feminist critique of it since the first and last trains—who are doing all the work—are female while the unkind, too important trains are all male. It was an interesting reading (and the points this student made were really quite good). 

But I think it's still a fine book to read. 

In our conversation we connected it with the story of The Good Samaritan, which is one of Phoebe's favourite stories from some Berenstain Bear's Bible Storybook. She always asks for me to read her the story with the bad guys who hurt the one guy. Anyway...it's sort of like The Good Samaritan.

But mostly the kids pointed out that it's very much like "that one game" I have in my quiet bag for church...and they were absolutely correct about that.

So we got it out and they played with it for a while before asking if they could get out the trains to play with in the basement. Which they absolutely were allowed to do (after they cleaned up the obstacle course they'd made for themselves out of couch cushions and bouncy animals this morning). 


I'm going to call this afternoon a win because Phoebe kept talking about want to watch a show when she got home from the walk. I will send them back outside to enjoy the beautiful weather we're having soon, but for now they're building train tracks in the basement and that's just fine with me.

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