Merritt and Alex stories
This morning has been a wonderful morning.
The kids have been playing great. This morning Merritt was playing a game where he took aspects of a book and translated them into a different setting. He kept explaining parts to me and it was hilarious. In the book some talking animals are trying to get home past a poisonous fog, and he decided in his setting it was a cloud of hydrogen that circled a planet and the animals were in spaceships trying to get past, but they couldn't fly their spaceship through the hydrogen gas because their engines would ignite it.
And Merritt's talk about his story reminded me of something Alex said the other day - I don't know if I wrote this down or not. I might be repeating myself here, but Alex was pretending his bed was a spaceship and he was landing on the sun. I commented that it was pretty hot on the sun and Alex said that it was okay he had his special thermal underwear (an idea he got from his brother, who got it from the computer game Space Quest, where the thermal underwear protects a person from extreme heat). I asked what would protect his spaceship from melting in the heat and Alex looked at me and said "it has legs too." I didn't understand and repeated my question. "It has legs mom!" Alex said, "it can wear thermal underwear too." I thought it was cute.
Anyway, after Merritt finished his game I got him doing his spelling practice. The spelling practice is actually going pretty good, and Merritt has been acknowledging that reading is getting easier for him. Basically I choose a bunch of words with a couple of related spelling patterns and ask Merritt to spell them. We correct each word immediately after he writes it and it isn't a big deal if he gets it wrong, because afterall he's never tried to write the words before. He knows the words will probably have something in common with the other words and afterwards he circles the patterns in them. I adjust the lists as we go along, so today when he spelt "unless" "oonless" I added a couple more "un" words. It gives me a chance to see how he understands the sounds and letters. We're big into drawing diagrams these days, so afterwards we made a venn diagram showing the different ways we can write the vowel sounds ee (like bee) or e (like bed).
Then Merritt got into his own drawing. He started into a story of his own and at some point asked me to write down his brainstorming. He wanted a list of characters for his story, for me to write down what the setting, plot and climax of the story would be. It was funny, because it led to a discussion about how we tell time. He said the story took place in one million BC, but after talking for a minute or two it became obvious he meant a million AD, so we talked about the difference between those, and what AD origionally stood for and how people use CE instead now. He decided he should tell time by when the Green Knight was born, so he decided his story took place in one million AGK, (After Green Knight) but then he thought about it for a minute or two and decided that the Green Knight always existed, but only became what he was during the ancient Greek era, when he became a demi-god. Well, then I had to talk about how people argued about when Jesus first existed, and did he exist before his birth, as some aspect of God or not? Was he around at creation or was he created? It was so fun.
Alex was getting frusturated though, that I was helping Merritt so much. "Merritt's not the only person in the family," he said angrily. I did read and play a bit with him, but I should go do more. Except right now he's playing a variation of battleship with Merritt, and they're arguing over the rules they're making up. So as long as they are relatively happy with that, I should enjoy doing other things and not worrying about them.
The kids have been playing great. This morning Merritt was playing a game where he took aspects of a book and translated them into a different setting. He kept explaining parts to me and it was hilarious. In the book some talking animals are trying to get home past a poisonous fog, and he decided in his setting it was a cloud of hydrogen that circled a planet and the animals were in spaceships trying to get past, but they couldn't fly their spaceship through the hydrogen gas because their engines would ignite it.
And Merritt's talk about his story reminded me of something Alex said the other day - I don't know if I wrote this down or not. I might be repeating myself here, but Alex was pretending his bed was a spaceship and he was landing on the sun. I commented that it was pretty hot on the sun and Alex said that it was okay he had his special thermal underwear (an idea he got from his brother, who got it from the computer game Space Quest, where the thermal underwear protects a person from extreme heat). I asked what would protect his spaceship from melting in the heat and Alex looked at me and said "it has legs too." I didn't understand and repeated my question. "It has legs mom!" Alex said, "it can wear thermal underwear too." I thought it was cute.
Anyway, after Merritt finished his game I got him doing his spelling practice. The spelling practice is actually going pretty good, and Merritt has been acknowledging that reading is getting easier for him. Basically I choose a bunch of words with a couple of related spelling patterns and ask Merritt to spell them. We correct each word immediately after he writes it and it isn't a big deal if he gets it wrong, because afterall he's never tried to write the words before. He knows the words will probably have something in common with the other words and afterwards he circles the patterns in them. I adjust the lists as we go along, so today when he spelt "unless" "oonless" I added a couple more "un" words. It gives me a chance to see how he understands the sounds and letters. We're big into drawing diagrams these days, so afterwards we made a venn diagram showing the different ways we can write the vowel sounds ee (like bee) or e (like bed).
Then Merritt got into his own drawing. He started into a story of his own and at some point asked me to write down his brainstorming. He wanted a list of characters for his story, for me to write down what the setting, plot and climax of the story would be. It was funny, because it led to a discussion about how we tell time. He said the story took place in one million BC, but after talking for a minute or two it became obvious he meant a million AD, so we talked about the difference between those, and what AD origionally stood for and how people use CE instead now. He decided he should tell time by when the Green Knight was born, so he decided his story took place in one million AGK, (After Green Knight) but then he thought about it for a minute or two and decided that the Green Knight always existed, but only became what he was during the ancient Greek era, when he became a demi-god. Well, then I had to talk about how people argued about when Jesus first existed, and did he exist before his birth, as some aspect of God or not? Was he around at creation or was he created? It was so fun.
Alex was getting frusturated though, that I was helping Merritt so much. "Merritt's not the only person in the family," he said angrily. I did read and play a bit with him, but I should go do more. Except right now he's playing a variation of battleship with Merritt, and they're arguing over the rules they're making up. So as long as they are relatively happy with that, I should enjoy doing other things and not worrying about them.