School on Mulberry Street

There are so. many. kids.
   On Mulberry Street.
         In our neighborhood.
                  Everywhere we walk there are kids.
                   
                 So. many. kids.

I can't begin to know all the names of the kids that live in the two houses/yards on either side of our home.  Scads of them.  Some we've gotten to know quite well.  Some of the little ones will run to meet us if they see us walking down the sidewalk towards home.  A couple of them love to sneak inside the house in the hopes of getting a cookie or a cracker.

We enjoy them.

This afternoon I went outside to check on "life on Mulberry Street" and  saw a beautiful sight.

 Someone had thrown away slightly termite eaten paper and documents from an office and these kids had found the treasures and were playing school!  The "professor" sat on the large rock under the tree.  (It looks like he has white hair, but due to the intense heat, he has a severe case of heat rash so the powder helps to make him feel better, but it also served to make him look like a REAL professor!)

None had pencils or other writing instruments.   The "professor" had a tiny piece of charcoal he was trying to write with so I grabbed a box of crayons to add to the fun and pulled up a chair to observe the play school, Niger-style.

Having a writing tool,  "the prof" began to carefully write down the names of all his pupils and then called the roll.

Recitation came next.  Each one got up to count as far as he could, in French, of course, which is the language they speak and learn in at school, but not at home.

I was reminded of all the times as a kid that I had set up my pretend school in the kitchen on Sunday afternoons and coerced my little brother to be my pupil. And Lindsay! A natural from the beginning. She spent hours teaching Erika "everything she needed to know about everything!"

This evening I went out on the porch to hang up a wet rug and found another school set up in our yard.  This time  "the professor" was the student, learning his multiplication tables, reciting them over and over and over again. His teacher was the neighbor boy who is in jr high.