Oh, and of course, they LOVE pressing the button to open the door.
As a reader, Ethan prefers fiction. He just loves a good story. Duck on a Bike was a recent favorite. It's about, well, a duck on a bike. Not many subtleties, but very cute. He has picked out some simply awful books as well. But that doesn't stop him from requesting "his" book every time we sit down to read.
Lucas is all about the non-fiction. He tells me the kind of book he is interested in that day, and then turns me loose to find it while he surfs the library catalog on the computer.
Lucas isn't kidding when he tells me what topics he is interested in - this kid loves to learn. Actually, they both do. At this age, they just soak everything up. Their first area of interest was the ocean, as a result of watching Finding Nemo for the first time - and then fifty more times over the following couple of weeks. Lucas was enthralled with the shark and was really excited to find books about them in the library. Ethan was just as excited about the divers in the movie, and so we all did a little happy dance when we found a book with both sharks and divers.
With our interest piqued, we took a trip to the library to learn more. We soon found our all-time favorite book: Meet the Dinosaurs! This awesome book highlights a dozen dinos, providing pictures and one relevant fact for each. So now both Ethan and Lucas can tell you that a Troodon has "very large eyes" and that an Ankylosaurus has "a tail club." And they have really learned about these dinosaurs, as they can identify them anywhere they see them - placemats, other books and toys, movies, and pictures on the internet. It is truly amazing. Every night before bed, Lucas now reads the book to us, correctly identifying and pronouncing each of these dinos as well as their distinguishing traits:
My favorite thing about all this learning is that the facts they learn inevitably end up in their imaginative play. For example, Lucas recently decided that it was Dimetrodon's birthday. He gathered all the dinosaur figures and had them sing "Happy Birthday" to Dimetrodon. Then they all enjoyed some birthday cake. T-Rex told all the guests not to be scared because he was nice and wouldn't eat them today. He also made sure that Brachiosaurus had leaves to eat because he is a plant eater.
We've also used the dinos for teaching important life lessons. Lucas was having a particularly bad day recently. He really roughed up Ethan a couple of times during the morning. Later he wanted to play dinos with me, handing me Parasauralophus while he wanted to handle T-Rex. While playing the part of Parasauralophus (thank goodness I was a theatre major in college), I told T-Rex that I didn't want to play with him because he was too scary. Lucas, as T-Rex (without any formal training), told me that he was nice, not scary. Parasauralophus told T-Rex that he was scared of him because he saw him hitting and biting earlier in the day and he didn't want to play with a dinosaur who bites and hits when he gets mad. Lucas thought very deeply about this - you could see the gears turning. Then he said "I would love to be your friend Parasauralophus. I'm sorry. If I get mad, I'll stomp my feet instead."
Now think of how far the dinosaurs would have come if they were as smart as my little Lukey!
1 comment:
Oh, Jess, this is wonderful. Grandpa and I were in awe when Lucas sat on our couch and told us each dino's name and a characteristic. The most precious thing was he held the book up each time he turned the page so Grandpa could see the dino, never realizing that if he didn't turn the book around so the page faced Grandpa, all Grandpa could see was the book's cover. I would sure like to have been in that library to see the three of you shake your booties in the little happy dance.
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