moovement

Isaac wanted to take a picture with the police officer driving through the neighborhood, but here he looks like he is in trouble. Uh oh. 

 Isaac just loves to move. He always has. It is something he is really good at. 

 Papa has been taking him to play soccer lately.

 Plus he has his soccer practice - for two more weeks. They just meet once a week but he really likes it.

 This was too cute. A lot of the time when they do some worksheet with an animal, they will name it. I love the name Isaac choose for his cow. He told me several days before that something was shaped like a hexagon. I know some people think it is ridiculous to teach preschoolers shapes beyond the basics, but I secretly find it super cool. 

 There was one preschool I went to where they could tell the difference between a parallelogram and rhombus. I actually am not sure if I could tell you the difference right now without a brief refresher course, but a bunch of four and five year olds were doing it.

Isaac went to a birthday party for one of his close friends from preschool yesterday. It had a pirate theme and was at a local gymnastics place that has a pirate ship! Perfect. It was also close to where we live, so we were able to walk over there.

 I just love the moving pictures. This is the only one I got that was remotely in focus. 

Now for the other half of this post - Isaac really does have a magnificent capacity for language. I am not sure if it is above average or the upper end of average or just average. It is hard for me to use him as a comparison except for with the things he can't do yet. Meaning if a kid can't answer "when" questions correctly, I am not usually concerned, because Isaac has no concept of time besides things that have already happened (this is even fuzzy) and things that will happen either, so why would I expect a kid that is only a year older than him at most to be completely in tune with the difference between a day, week, month and year? 

But on to why Isaac is so awesome linguistically. 

1) He has a huge vocabulary. It seems to be growing exponentially. His most common question is not "Why?" but "What does ____ mean?" I am feeling like a walking dictionary again lately. I always try to give Aristotelian definitions whenever possible. I have found this to be a good strategy, because at least he will then know the general category the word belongs to and he is less likely to ask what another word in the definition means. It also is good mental gymnastics for me. He knows words like "chapter" and "bark mulch" and "hexagon" and uses them appropriately (well, mostly). 

2) He has great phonemic awareness. He is doing really well at generating a bunch of words that start with the same sound. This morning he wanted to do /ch/ and /j/. He initiated this game himself. For /j/ we came up with things like jello and Gina and giant and "G" and jump. For /ch/ he came up with chapter and few others that surprised me! He also has a good phonetic awareness: I came up with "chinchilla", he came up with "chin". He is also wanting to find rhymes as a game. I don't think he has this down 100% because sometimes he'll come up with something completely unrelated that starts with the same sound as the last word we came up with. I want to start doing blending soon but last time we tried, he didn't get it yet. Rhyming is fun and in my opinion a good social skill, but not important for pre-reading, so I feel like when he gets it, that is fine but there's no rush. 

3) Along the same lines, he has this amazing phonological memory. I guess every kid that learns language has to have good phonological memory, but Isaac is fun because he remembers lines from favorite books and repeats them in everyday conversation. We read "Cowboy Ed" and he liked that - then we will be talking and he'll say, "Well, I guess that's how they did it in the past!" I appreciate this because I do this too. I often make obscure references to something I have read and it amuses me, so it is fun to see Isaac doing the same thing. 

4) Syntactically, he is good to go for his age. He has made every complex sentence type in the book. I now do not feel okay graduating preschool age language kids from speech unless they are making some complex sentences - because Isaac was making them when he was 2. 

5) Now the most important thing is going to be to make sure his pragmatics develop appropriately. He has some good models and some not-so-great models... which is a topic for another post.... The most important thing I want him to learn is to be kind to other people. We don't like teasing and we don't like name-calling in our house. We also don't like the words "butt" or "booty" and if I hear the phrase "shake my booty" one more time I might have to go have a mini-meltdown in a corner. What Isaac has going for him is that he is at heart a very nice, sweet and empathetic boy, and I think that is what comes across most of the time. Social use of language is definitely the hardest, hardest part of language, the part that will require the most direct instruction as a parent, and the very most important part for him getting along well in life. 

I walked him to school today because Sonia is STILL sick - so I am staying home. We saw some pretty irises and tulips in a garden and then I started explaining "genes" to him (not weird, right?) because the tulips looked like they were painted with pink and white. He took that a step further and said, "Like your skin is white, and Sonia's is white, and mine is white and brown. And my Papa's is dark brown. And all my Papa's friends have dark brown skin too." Clearly we have had the African guys over a lot. I pointed out that Craig had lighter skin like me and he was Papa's friend too. Isaac has been thinking a lot about skin color lately. He saw some guy going into the library yesterday and said, "Hey Papa, I saw your friend with the dark brown skin and the pointed nose!" We still don't know who he was talking about. Maybe he thinks Papa is friends with all the black guys everywhere. It is interesting that he does not yet identify Sonia as having the same skin color as him, but he is correct - she is still pretty pale. Since she is a November baby and she didn't have jaundice, I just haven't gotten her out in the sun as much. The sun has also not been out as much, but we need not dwell on that. She also has drier and more sensitive skin, so I don't want to dry it out more. I will probably be better about sunscreen too this summer since she will be older than Isaac was his first summer. I am sure that eventually they will have a more similar skin color. Isaac really has gotten darker in the past year in my opinion. He is just turning into a kind, handsome little man. He has been opening the car doors for Sonia and me. I am not sure if this is his own initiative or if Teacher Sandy mentioned it. I like her. He has actually stopped biting his fingernails now and I credit her vigilance. 

Well, Sonia has a doctor's appointment so we can see if she has an ear infection or not... poor Sonia. Pray that our family gets better very very soon. Papa is sick too and I feel like we have been sick on and off since February. This coming weekend our cousins are coming down from Seattle with their kids, and I know Isaac would be SO bummed if he didn't get to play with them. It is also the Loyalty Days Parade in Newport... Hm... we might have to make a decision - but if we are too sick, we will not be able to do either. So pray that we all get better - at least for a week or two.