A moment in lateral thinking

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On the way to school today Boy 2 and I were chatting about the "wanted poster" that he had been required to do for homework the previous night. It was a wanted poster for the Iron Man. No not the cartoon character in the red and yellow metallic suit, the one more akin to the robot that lands on Earth from outer space in "The Iron Giant".

B2 had drafted a picture on his poster complete with rivets on the head and shoulder plates and had wanted to glue silver paper onto it to make it look more robot-like. We worked on it together and came up with a fabulous, realistic poster.

Unfortunately we had omitted to erase the pencil marks of the draft before we started. But it wasn't a complete loss. We decided to wait until the morning when the glue would have dried and to erase the pencil marks then.

Our morning was the usual round of chaos and apart from reminding B2 that the poster was there and he shouldn't forget it for school, I completely forgot about it.  It was only after we had arrived at school that it occurred to me we hadn't actually erased the original pencil marks. But all was not lost...

"You'll have to erase those pencil marks when we get into the classroom" I informed B2 with confidence.

"Oh, I've already tried that this morning and the glue had dried over the top of them, so I couldn't" he replied with great casualness.

"Oh no! What are we going to do?" I asked, genuinely panicked that I ruined his beautiful work.

"Don't worry. I just drew some extra lines and made it into another crane that reaches over the top of his head. See?" he piped up gleefully, showing me his poster.

I was truly impressed at his quick and lateral thinking. Not bad for an 8yo!

Shows that I have much to learn from my children.