The salt dough was the easy part. My boy came home with instructions for making it, because his class is going to make 3-dimensional maps out of it. I gave him the recipe and supervised while he did it--and told him I was impressed and proud when he cleaned up after the process without any coaching or prompting from me.
Then he told me that his class has been working on some kind of program for our local veterans, a program that includes all of the elementary school singing the "Star Spangled Banner", among other things. So we worked on that together. Well, we worked on it without that bit about the ramparts--that's the optional stanza, right? And that multi-octave nonsense. Also optional, at least if I'm participating.
Just because we had to google the words doesn't mean we weren't earnest about it or that he isn't looking forward to the performance.
No, it was after this that things went south quickly. The boy mentioned that he likes the part about the bombs bursting in air, and somehow...somehow this led to a discussion about war.
Oh dear.
I'm not a big fan of war, mostly because I'm not a big fan of telling other people (or countries) how to live. I'm also not a big fan of people dying for a cause--especially when they didn't make the cause. There are, of course, exceptions. That bit about wanting to be independent is one of them. But when the boy said something about always winning wars, I really couldn't keep my mouth shut--there's revisionism and then there is halftruth based on censorship and "Oh crap, how do I explain something this complicated to an 8 year old when I don't even totally understand it myself."
Wait, I know what we need--more salt dough.
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