"All About Me"

Jordan and I filled an "All About Me" form for his class's yearbook. Dale and I changed some of the questions:

"If I were President" became "If I were a Superhero"
"When I grow up, I want to be" became "If I could have a grown-up job now, I'd like to be"
"My hero/heroine is" became "I admire"

Here are his answers:

1. What I learned in kindergarten: I learned about tally marks. That there are negative hundreds and thousands, but actually I learned that from my mom. That there is nothing over infinity. And I learned that I'm so good at making friends there.

2. If I were a superhero, I would be Superman and save the world. I would want to be solving problems and helping the world out.

3. If I could have a grown-up job now, I would like to be a piano player, because I love piano and it's really easy to do. Just play the keys.

4. Words to describe me: Human. Nice. Jewish. A boy. Joke-teller. Crazy. Runner. Talker. Blond.

5. I admire Sam Zappa, because he has lots of ideas.

notes: He seems to feel that he learned a lot of math, which I think is true, and which he seems to be pretty excited about. When he answered question 3 he had recently been playing the piano, and we had been complimenting him. He had a lot of trouble with #4. Sam Zappa is his best buddy in class.

Expertise

This morning, attempting to speak in code to Dale, I said, "Were you aware that tomorrow there will be a high-temperature midday meal?" Aaron, not missing a beat, said, "Oh, is it a hot lunch day?" Um, yes.

Jordan, meanwhile, has begun to self-identify as being Good At Math. I have to agree with him. He continues to enjoy working with negative numbers:

Jordan: Mommy, five minus ten is negative five. Right?
Rachel: Yes, that's totally right. How did you figure that out?
Jordan: Because a ten is two fives, so if you have five and you take away one five, that's zero, and then you take away another five and that's negative five.

Wow. The other day in the car we were about to get onto the freeway, and Jordan was trying to decide whether to close his window:

Jordan: How long will we be on the freeway?
Rachel: Just a few seconds. We're getting on and then right away getting off again.
Jordan: How many seconds?
Rachel: I don't know. Here, we're getting on, you want to count?
Jordan: (counts silently until we get off) Forty seconds, Mama.
Rachel: Forty seconds. That's less than a minute. Do you know how many seconds in a minute?
Jordan: No.
Rachel: Sixty. Sixty seconds in a minute.
Jordan (pausing): So we had twenty more seconds before it would be a minute.
Rachel: Wow, that's right! Tell me how you know that.
Jordan: Because if you had four seconds, you would need two more to make six seconds, and this is the same thing only it's the tens family. So if you have forty seconds you need twenty more seconds to make sixty seconds and that's a minute.
Rachel (aware of the research on praising effort rather than ability): Jordan, you know, that is really something that you know how to figure that out. I can tell that you have put a lot of effort and thoughtfulness into learning math. You must really have been practicing, and thinking about what you are doing while you are practicing, to be able to do stuff like that.
Jordan: Yes and you know what Mommy? It's because I like math. That makes it fun to do it, almost like no work at all, so I just keep doing and doing it without even minding, and that way I get a lot of practice. So I get good at it because I like it and so I practice a lot.

It's a whole theory of expertise, really, sort of a snowball theory. I went on to tell him that I thought pretty soon he would start liking reading, too (it's currently more labor than fun, for him), once he has a little more practice.

Jokes

Everyone's telling jokes around here. The kids are busily memorizing jokes from a Monster Riddles library book.

Aaron: What goes ha ha ha clunk?
Respondent: I don't know, what?
Aaron (shrieking with such hysteria he can hardly deliver the line): A monster laughing his head off!!

Jordan: What do you say to a two-headed monster?
Respondent: I don't know, what?
Jordan: Hi hi!
(Imagine the many variations - number of heads, occasions for greeting, etc)

Dale, meanwhile, was entertained by a coworker who was being followed around by a duck while on a walk at lunchtime. There was a long silly riff from various lab members about how she might bring the duck to work, on the bus home, etc. Dale said it was too bad she wouldn't get the chance to bring him to the lab party and introduce him with, "This is my duck, Bill."

I don't have much to contribute myself - I seem to be more of the straight man. The other night I was lying down in such a way that the corner of a nearby pillow was sticking into my eye. I said, "That is a really 3-D effect I'm getting there," and Dale said, "It's not an effect." Something about the whole Avatar world we live in made this really funny at the time.

Bat house

Jordan was giving me a tour of the Wedgwood Elementary garden, in which he has a proprietary interest because his class does a lot of planting and other projects there. He especially wanted to show me the bird houses and the bat houses. (I have to write "bat house" as two words or you might be misled into thinking he was showing me a bath house.) Jordan pointed out how the bat houses are open on the bottom and have metal mesh on the back, because bats like to hang and their claws would slide off smooth wood. He also pointed out to me that the bat houses are black.

Jordan: That's because black things have more, they attract more of the sunlight so the bat house is warm. The black color brings in the power. When the house is painted black it soaks up the energy more and makes it warmer in there.
Rachel: It soaks up the energy, I totally get what you're saying. Soaks it up like a sponge.
Jordan: Right, yes, like a sponge. Except that the light is not wet.
Rachel: Right, it's not water. I meant if there could be a sponge for light.
Jordan: No actually, not a sponge. A vacuum cleaner.

Now I wonder if maybe he said "suck up the energy," not soak up.

I thought, how fascinating that he thinks the energy is actively sucked into the bat house, instead of just being better absorbed, the way I think of it. But Hunter says that energetically, both suction in a vacuum cleaner and capillary action in a sponge are active processes, with parallel entropy effects. I would have to think about that.

Also, I love how totally unproblematic it is to talk about whether the black bat house is like a sponge or like a vacuum cleaner. We think in metaphors.

Mortality

While we were playing in the backyard, Aaron pointed to the giant pruning shears, about which warnings have been issued.

Aaron: That could cut my finger.
Rachel: Or your toe.
Aaron: Yeah. And then I would die.
Rachel: Or get an owie.
Aaron: We’re going to die.
Rachel: We are?
Aaron: We all are. Aaron and Mommy and Daddy and Jordan.
Rachel: But not today.
Aaron: Not today. On Thursday.

Compliment circle

Jordan asked that we do a compliment circle because he had something he wanted to give a compliment for. This seems to be something he does at school. He explained that you don't compliment someone's clothes or something like that, you compliment something that they did. And no, we could not do it at the breakfast table, because that was not special enough. Also it was not a circle.

So after breakfast the four of us arranged ourselves in a circle in the living room. Jordan recommended that we sit in lotus position, which for him is criss-cross-applesauce but with your spine straight and your palms on your knees. He found a ball, which you hold when it is your turn, and then you give it to the person you gave a compliment to, and then it's their turn. If you don't have any compliments, you say "Pass." Jordan's first compliment was inspired by the fact that Dale, today, is taking the car to the mechanic, picking it up at the end of the day, picking up the kids, feeding them dinner, and managing them solo while the band is practicing at our house, so that I can teach an evening class.

Dale: I have an important one. Jordan, I couldn't remember where I put your patch, and you remembered that I had put it in my shirt pocket, and I looked where you said and I found it. You were attentive and helpful. Thank you.
Jordan: You're welcome. And my compliment is, thank you Daddy for doing all the work today.
Dale: And thank you Mommy for doing most of that every other day.
Rachel: Mine is, Thank you Daddy for taking the time to understand what I meant earlier today when we were having a tough conversation.
Aaron (taking a turn): Thank you Jordan for playing fun games with me.
Jordan: Thank you Aaron for being fun to play with.

I have to say, we all felt great! Thank you Jordan for teaching us how to do a compliment circle.

Math homework

Jordan knocked me out by doing this math homework almost all independently. The thing with "6-11=-5" was especially amazing to me. He is supposed to make math sentences out of 6, 5, and 11, and after knocking out the easy ones on the addition, he went with negative numbers on the subtraction. Okay, "5-6=-1" does not strictly follow the rules, but who cares? He needed a little help figuring out what 6-11 was.

Rachel: Okay, if we start with six, (holding up six fingers)
Jordan: Then we take away one at a time up to eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six (Rachel folding down fingers)
Rachel (reaching zero, all fingers folded): What do I do now?
Jordan: Start putting them up again. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. (Rachel has five fingers up. Jordan counts) Five!! Is it negative five?!
Rachel: Totally. You got it.

I was quite impressed. Now I'm thinking about the difference between hand-counting like that, and a number line, which is the classic way to approach negative numbers. I wonder about the possible advantages of doing it on your body vs. on a graphical representation, and also I wonder about the conceptual difference between numbers-of-fingers and position along a line. Really interesting.

Reading is still slow and I think frustrating for him; he'd much rather be read to, or guess. Writing, he seems to enjoy. Asked to "write a story to tell about the fish" (bottom right), he said (and I'm translating his spelling): "2 flatfish 5 sockeyes met by the stream and played. The end."