162/366: The Love Fishtank

SteelyKid was sent home on Wednesday with strep throat, and so needed to be home thursday as well. she was very disappointed to be missing school, as her class was preparing for a Valentine’s Day party on Friday. I picked up a bunch of work for her, including a heart-shaped paper pouch to hold the cards the kids would exchange.

You wouldn’t’ve known she was officially sick on Thursday– her energy level was basically at normal. She powered through a bunch of homework, and then set to decoarting the pouch with hearts and happy stick figures in a rainbow of colors. And also a fishtank:

Detail from SteelyKid's heart-shaped pouch for Valentine's Day cards.
Detail from SteelyKid’s heart-shaped pouch for Valentine’s Day cards.

I’m not sure why love has a fishtank, but I’m glad to see she’s not confined by conventional Valentine iconography…

More seriously, her teacher also had the kids write a note to each of their classmates saying something nice about them. SteelyKid had finished all but one of these before she was sent home, so I mostly don’t know what she wrote, but the booklet of messages to her from other kids is ridiculously cute and charming. She’s apparently widely regarded as funny and “wise” (a sort of odd word choice, which must’ve come from something they read as a class), and about a third of them mention the “Zoom Day” when she donned sparring gear and let all her classmates punch her in the chest. As a physicist, I was also happy to see that one classmate wrote “I hope you can teach me your math tricks”…

It was a really sweet class project, and must’ve taken really careful management by the teacher. But it came out great, so I continue to be very impressed with her school.