"you're a smart lady"

That's what one of my summer school students told me this morning. One of the classes was very impressed with the laminated pictures that I produced while we were discussing the story we read. One of the kids asked where I got them, and I shared the secrets of photocopying, colored pencils, and laminating (my new favorite past-time, btw!). Then came the "you're a smart lady" comment. But probably the funniest part of the exchange was when the kid "corrected" himself with, "I mean, a smart teenager." Not surprisingly, I was a little taken-aback by this child thinking that I was a teenager. But then I started thinking back to when I was 6 and I recall having no concept of age beyond the relative (i.e. younger than me, about the same age as me, older than me, and a lot older than me). I guess I probably fall into the "a lot older than me" category for this little boy, and amusingly, so do teenagers...
The pictures might look familiar -- they're from Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss. I decided to read it to my classes because it's an entertaining story with a pretty easy-to-follow story line. The kids are going to be making their own [simplified] story books for the rest of the week. These little books were a labor of love... seriously. I hadn't figured out how I wanted to do them until my TA was long-gone, so I got to do all the stapling myslef... 135 books! I'm not thrilled about the amount of paper that went into these, but I'm hoping the books will be something the kids enjoy and actually look forward to taking home.