Child Psychology? Anyone?

So an update on the daily struggle. In the classroom with 25 monsters jumping up and down.(Everyday is less like teaching children and more like playin wack-a-mole) So the only way to keep monsters busy is by giving them paper and crayons. The girls draw houses with birds, the sun, grass and flowers and the occasionally rainbow. Many had apple trees and some had rain. Though u may not notice the trend with these series of pictures, the girls tended to draw the suns on the left hand side, while the boys tended to draw them on the right.




The fact that the pictures were so similar made me wonder about the few differences. How come some have rain and some dont? Why do some pictures portray rain more uniformly than others?

I thought maybe I was overthinking things until I got to the boys pictures. I wish I could display to you these gruesome depictions of war and unnecessary killing the boys drew, but they all wanted take their pictures home to show their moms.(Yea...I kno) One of them I really admired, a man was on top of a bus shooting a flamethrower at a burning plane and burning someone up on the street. Yea its too bad u missed that one. And then he made the sun with a smiley face on the right hand side....

But! My good little Anderson let me keep his and my goodness...talk about a picture speaking a thousand words...check this out.

So his house is on stilts in a bay filled with giant killer sharks. The figure on top is him shooting at the sharks. The one a floor below him is his mother shooting at the sharks. The one in the window is his four year old sister, because that is where she would be most safe(by the way, he told me all this) And the one staring curiously over the boat is his 6 year old brother.

After looking at the picture admiring the creativity for a couple minutes I asked´Is your father here?` Of course implying the second meaning. First, he responded, no. An answer that was telltale because he drew in the rest of his family but not his father. Then I asked, why not? And he said, well, yess, he is there..hes just sleeping in the boat and you cant see him...an even more telltale answer. If you were me you would have wanted to cry to. Anderson´s only ten but hes gotta protect his mommy from the sharks. If anyone can enlighten me on any other meaning please,feel free.

On a lighter note, I was also given a panoramic picture of flowers, I liked that.

Also, I am really appreciating how the kids are kinds picking up on the english thing(some even are tryna throw some spanish in there)Stefani, my favorite if I had to choose, remembered how to say Pineapple! And I have to say, that is one of the fruits whose pronunciation in english is the most different from in portuguese.