Studying for a report..

Mini-Me is studying to find information for her first ever report.
The curriculum only gave her a photo-copied encyclopedia page. Granted, it's all about teaching her the basics of research and information gathering. I don't have a problem with that.

She has a problem with it.
She doesn't have enough information to use her own words to write the report.
She keeps asking me, "Mom, what about plagiarism?"

The curriculum mentioned it, not I.
She learned about it on Arthur, not from me.
I sighed.

I explained that I wasn't really concerned about it because of the information given to her with the curriculum. I told her that she'd be adding words and thoughts as she wrote the final report to go from one point to another.

But as we talked - she wanted to know more about her subject. More than just a photocopied encyclopedia page can tell her.

The subject is George Washington Carver. He is one of my favorite people to read about. There's a Mott Media book about him, that I thought I owned, but I don't (but will). I wanted her to hear about the scientist that had a relationship with the God who created the peanut and sweet potato.

I had to trust the library to give me something.

I searched via the internet and found a couple. One is written kind of in prose for easy reading. One is a graphic novel kind of thing. Our librarian with a really cool name, showed me three more in our local library (usually our little city library doesn't have much of what I want.)

She's enjoying the books and I'm thrilled. Quite by accident, we discovered a treasure.

"Mom!! Listen this: 'Moses and Mary Carver taught George and his brother Jim to read and write at home.'" (I'm paraphrasing.)

She beamed at me. "He was home-schooled, just like me."

I restrained from happy dancing. It was hard.
One thing about it, she'll never look at a peanut the same again.
And I'm quite okay with that.
Excuse me while I happy dance.