I redid my office with the chalkboard paint that I’ve been wanting since my kids were preschoolers. Better late than never, right? My plan was to use the wall to explore different plot points while I was writing. But I wanted the kids to use it, too. Maybe, I suggested, we could write up a word of the day. (Insert groan here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.)
We tried it for a while without much traction until my daughter wanted to know what quagmire meant, because A. Burr was trying to figure out how to emerge from it. And voila, our new project: The Hamilton word of the day. (Or, you know, when the mood strikes us.) The kids get to do their fair share of swearing while singing along with the soundtrack, and they get to learn some SAT words, too.
A sampling:
quagmire
providence
squalor
bursar
manumission
venerated
insidious
inimitable
diuretic
reticent