AJ has been on another brainy jag. He spent the morning, while I was prepping for my water aerobics class, working through one of his workbooks of math problems. He ran out of problems to do, so we took a trip to our local teacher supply store for reinforcements. We came home with some handwriting practice materials, including a pad of paper with space on the top for illustrations and lines below for writing stories, as well as a couple of math books, a write-on placemat map of the United States and a giant floor puzzle of the human body. The puzzle is two-sided: one side features the skeleton and the other assorted internal organs and blood vessels.

AJ went to work on the puzzle right away. With a little help from me, he put together the skeleton side of the puzzle before lunch, then set to work on filling in the states on his United States map. After lunch (which took a long time, as there was a great deal of deliberation required on the color of each state: �Mommy, I think Washington should be green because its nickname is The Evergreen State, but then what color should Oregon be?�), we did the organs side of the puzzle and then I cleaned up the kitchen and AJ disappeared. He turned out to be sitting at the table in his room working on one of his new books to practice his writing. When he was done with the page (the letter L), he moved on to a color-by-number book where the numbers are determined by solving math problems, but he started to get tired, so we stopped for stories and a nap before stretching that little brain of his any further.

I have to say that I�ve always thought the unschoolers a little unhinged, but after a day like today with AJ, the idea is not seeming so far-fetched. He also spent a bunch of time at lunch looking at my big art book (He liked Bosch�s Garden of Earthly Delights, not because of the giant fish or the people dancing with an owl on their head, but because of the character with flowers growing out of his ass) and my facsimile of Matisse�s Jazz, which he leafed through very carefully, defining what he thought each image was, paying the most attention to the pictures that were cutouts of one another as if he was matching up the edges in his mind to make a complete whole.

Add to all that the round of T-ball he played earlier, he has given himself time on math, science, reading, writing, geography, art and gym today. And if singing �Dem bones� while putting together the puzzle counts, he also squeezed some music in there. There are definitely times when I think AJ does best when you just leave him alone.

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