I Am Not A Control Freak And No, You Are Not Allowed To Disagree With Me.

The other day, Aaron brought home his second ever homework assignment which was to decorate a picture of a turkey over the weekend and then bring it back on Monday so that it could be placed in the preschool "turkey farm."  The note that was attached to the picture encouraged the kids to use any materials that they wanted and to get creative.  The turkey was supposed to reflect each student's personality.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Yeah, not so much.

When I was a student, I always put weekend assignments off until the very last minute on Sunday night and the thoughts of that unfinished homework tortured me all weekend.  I knew that this turkey deal wasn't a five page paper describing the origins of the turkey and how it has impacted society today...a project that I assume would require much time and research and Googling...but it was an assignment nonetheless, and I felt that it was a good opportunity to teach Aaron to do things right away and to not put them off.  So during Elyse's nap we got to work on the turkey.

I love art projects.  I love to color, and paint, and glue, and use colored glue as paint, and...you get it.  So I was all over this turkey thing and I had all of these ideas for how we could make my Aaron's turkey unique, but all he really wanted to do was use glitter.  It didn't matter where the glitter went or what color it was, he just knew that glitter HAD to be part of the equation.  So I'm all, "Really, do we have to use glitter.  I don't ever recall seeing a sparkly turkey before."  But I could tell that he wasn't relinquishing the glitter.  So then I had this awesome idea to use felt on the turkey's body and my pinking shears would make it so look all feathery and stuff especially if we alternated layers of dark and light brown pieces of felt   Oh this was going to be good. 

Well, he was on board with the felt, but under no circumstances was I supposed to be the one to wield the scissors.  I was like, "But Aaron, look at how great this would look if you cut it like this and then glued it over here and..." and he was NOT buying it.  You know what he did?  He took his regular old boring scissors, cut two squares, well sort of squares, and glued them right on top of each other on the turkey's body.  I almost cried.

After that I figured I had lost all control and I just let him do it the way that he wanted, but honestly I really thought about tracing that turkey so that I could make one of my own.  Plus, I knew that the right thing to do was to just let him have full control because, well, it was his turkey.  I also knew that I would feel like a moron if he took in this perfect turkey that was obvious that he had a little "help".  I could see the look on his teacher's face now like, "Mrs. Hicks, are you really sure that you had nothing to do with this turkey's incredibly realistic feathers and fancy top hat?"  And I would be like, "Absolutely not!  Just what you are implying lady?"

So here it is.  Aaron's turkey...

Even though he took none of my suggestions, I still think that it is pretty awesome and I know that he is really proud of it which is the important thing, I guess.  Maybe when I take him in to school tomorrow I can smuggle an extra turkey out under my shirt.  I still have some great ideas.