Accurate report

A few photos

The blur is Ava. She always moves that fast.

Aaron is very content in the garden. Maybe when he's older we'll tell him we found him in the cabbage patch.

Jordan is more at home on the couch with Grandpa.

Earthcake safety

We have been discussing earthquake safety at the dinner table. Since I have been in earthquake drills since kindergarten, it seems natural to me, and there are quakes in Seattle so it seems like a good thing to discuss. The boys find it fascinating and want to hear about it over and over again. They don't seem troubled, just interested. Maybe because they call it an "earthcake" it sounds less worrisome. When I asked what they thought you should do to be safe in an earthquake, Jordan said, "If you are driving a car and a giant crack opens up in the earth in front of the car, the driver should be very careful not to drive the car into the crack." An excellent start. He also said you should do what the parents say, which is a good plan as well. We went over the basics (if you are inside, stay inside, etc.). They like to practice hiding under the dining room table. Jordan has been testing his earthquake logic by figuring out what you should do if you are in the living room, in your bed, walking to school, etc. All good. He has also been coming up with less likely scenarios: "What should you do if there is an earthcake when you are up in the top of a tree?" I admitted that would be a tough one.

Language and sensemaking

Jordan is figuring out spelling. School encourages him to do a mixture of carefully sounding out words and just guessing, which I think is great. Apparently we all read by letting our brains fill in the blanks anyway, so why not put that human skill to good use from the start? It's worth sacrificing some accuracy for speed, is my feeling, since if you forget the beginning of the word by the time you get to the end, you've kind of missed the point.

Sounding things out is not necessarily a reliable way to spell correctly, either. Of course there's the old line about "photi" - "ph" as in pharmacy, "o" as in women, "ti" as in nation. But Jordan has decided that dragon starts with a J. Go ahead, say it aloud: it DOES start with a "j" sound, at least the way I say it. Jragon. Am I wrong? And truck, according to Jordan, starts with "ch." This blows me away. I didn't hear a "ch" until he pointed it out to me, but once he did, it honestly seemed more reasonable to me than the alternative. I told him I was impressed with his accurate hearing (and for that matter, spelling), and pretty much left it at that. At some point he'll learn that truck starts with T and eight starts with E and all that.

Aaron, meanwhile, was talking on the phone with Grandma the other day, and she asked him what he was doing, and he said, "Talking on the phone with Grandma." Right. I was reminded of when Rosencrantz and Gildenstern asked Hamlet what he was reading and he said "Words, words, words." Or when Holden Caulfield, to the same question, answered "Goddamn book." Aaron wasn't being flippant, though. His answer made me realize how often we help him attend to and name what he's doing by saying things like "Aaron, are you drawing a fish?" when we already know the answer. Maybe it's time to back off on that.

Artificial mystery flavor

Jordan got a lollipop as a prize in a bingo game at school, and here is the label. What is the world coming to?

I asked Jordan what it tasted like to him, and he said vanilla.

Rainy day lineup

On dry days, the elementary school kids line up outside, but when it's raining, they use various indoor locations. Kindergarteners are in the lunchroom. It's pretty chaotic. Here are two kindergarten classes... the rest of the room has ten more tables full of older kids.

Jordan butting heads with Keegan. Identical jackets... I hope I remembered to put Jordan's name in his.

He spotted me and started posing.

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