Thursday, February 26, 2015

jump right in

I wish I had a dollar for every alphabet book I've ever read where x means xylophone. I'd be a rich woman today.
Sure enough, yesterday as my tiny granddaughter and I flipped the pages together, we found ourselves gazing down at The Letter X and a rainbow colored xylophone. "What's that?" I ask. "A Hellophone," she answers confidently.
I love that so much!
It makes me think of language and learning in general because children are just so very clever aren't they. My daughter called a trampoline a bounce-o-line when she was two, although at first, she had called it a tunic. What?? Why on earth a tunic? Turns out that in Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day, Christopher Robin takes off his tunic and he and Rabbit catch Pooh as he tumbles from the sky on it and of course he bounces.
Nothing like a good book to enrich your vocabulary.
Especially books with British expressions. Books like Winnie the Pooh or Beatrix Potter's Tales of Peter Rabbit. Children aren't bothered a smidge by the vagaries of the English language. I suppose to the young, all language is mysterious.
They look and they listen and they think.
And they jump right in.

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