Miniaturist

Over the summer I try to have themes for the kids to structure our lessons and activities around, and currently it’s plants—memorizing the fruit of the Spirit, nature walks, growing seeds, learning about famous botanists—but I may have picked this theme so we could make terrariums. We ordered an online kit and made closed terrariums with layers of rock, charcoal, moss, and potting soil. The kit came with small, easy-to-grow plants and we decorated with figurines and rocks. The boys made a landscape for dinosaurs and Ellie made one with a princess and horses.

I love working in the miniature. I always have to hold myself back when the kids get assigned to do a diorama—the first time this happened, when Eric got assigned to make one of a doctor’s office, I used cardstock and glue applied with toothpicks to create a perfectly diminuitive replica complete with wall-mounted otoscope and direct ophthalmoscope, a tissue box with miniature tissues, a white coat draped over a chair, and tins of lollipops and tongue depressors. Then I realized most other parents were grabbing life-sized objects related to their topic and putting them in a box, which may have been what the teacher meant. You know, grabbing a few extra syringes or medication samples from the office and gluing them in.

I suppose in the end cataract surgery is working in the miniature too: removing an object no larger than three by five millimeters from a tiny space without breaching a membrane tenths-of-a-micron thick. On someone who is awake and may talk or shift their feet without realizing the tiniest of bodily movements looks like an earthquake under the microscope.

As usual, making the terrariums involved a little more mess and comparison-driven bickering than I had envisioned, but it was fun. The boys seem unable to resist taking the lid off theirs to look and feel inside, but otherwise they’re doing great so far.