The wonderful world of kids

The five- to seven-year-olds I work with say things that are delightful, hilarious, common-sensical, nonsensical, profound and bemusing -- often several of these at one and the same time. Here are some recent offerings:

Seven-year-old N: When I run, I get a headache. My head hurts because my brain bounces up and down in it.

Six-year-old D: My lip got sof-tened today, when my board [magnetic writing board] fell on it. That's what happens when you get beatened up -- you get a soft lip.

Me, to five-year-old F: "What sports do you like, F?"
F: "Sports what we're not s'posed to do [here at school]."
"What sports are they?"
"Football"
"Oh, which team do you play football for, F?"
"Everyone. I play for everyone."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some fitness-testing I was doing involved the kids seeing how far they could hop in a single hop (i.e. landing on their take-off leg). Many struggled with the concept of a single hop: they wanted to hop hop hop all the way to the end of the outstretched tape measure.
After his multi-hop effort, F exclaimed: "I's making myself fly. I's flying myself."

Six-year-old budding inventor, C: "I'm gonna invent a computer and then I type in and see if fairies and aliens are real."

Five-year-old burgeoning biologist and environmentalist, K, after showing me pictures from National Geogrophic of a sperm whale and a giant squid:
"I've been learning all about life! I've been doing it because I'm going to save the planet. Mr Walker, would you like to come over to my place and learn about life?

I tried to picture thirty-six-year-old me explaining to K's mum that I had popped over for the afternoon to learn about life from her son. And then I thought: do not go there.

Seven-year-old P brought in his globe for news today. (It was about the size of a large, spherical watermelon.) When the kids tell news, they're encouraged to say how the event, person or object they're talking about made or makes them feel. "I felt happy," is the worn out phrase of choice.
P surprised us today by saying: "When I got the globe, I felt like I was outside the world. And like I could just go down into the world. Oh, and I felt happy."

Five-year-old J had one hand very deeply and noticeably tucked in to his short pocket.
"Hello Mr Pockets," I jovially greeted him.
Earnest J: "Do you know some people don't even know where their pockets are?!?"

If you have any adult-world insight into what five-year-old J might have meant, please share it.

Grumpy Grammarians

A few days ago, I looked up the word of in Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd rev'd edn). Here's what greeted me:

This preposition shares with another word of the same length, AS, the evil glory of being accessary to more crimes against grammar than any other. But, in contrast with the syntax of as, which is so difficult that blunders are very excusable, that of of is so simple that only gross carelessness can lead anyone astray with it. Nevertheless, straying is perpetual, and the impression of amateurishness produced on an educated reader of newspapers is discreditable to the English Press (p. 409).

An intro. such as this made me hesitant to read on: what sort of amateurish dunderhead, or worse, grammar-criminal would I be shown to be? Nevertheless, plow on I did. Following his curmudgeonly introduction, Fowler lists and gives examples of seven common 'of-blunders':

... (1) Wrong patchings; (2) Patching the unpatchable; (3) Side-slip; (4) Irresolution; (5) Needless repetition; (6) Misleading ommission; (7) Some freaks of idiom. [If you'd like to see these explained or exemplified, let me know.]

The irony of my time in pages 409-10 of Fowler was that, erudite and scathing as his comments were, they didn't help me solve my of-problem. The solution came as, stretched out on my back on the lounge room floor, I picked over the problem with my wife.

The moral?

Common sense applied to a specific usage problem counts for as much as a headful of general grammatical principles. Just don't tell the likes of Fowler I said it!

A dad who can't resist ...

My wife and I were unsure how well our daughter had mastered 'the roll' -- until we found her in this position! She started on the mat in the foreground.

Some friends generously gave us a backpack to cart our daughter around in. Last weekend we sand-tested said backpack with a trip to the Sculpture by the Sea event at Cottesloe Beach (highly recommended if you're in Perth and can get there before 23rd March; though, with fifty-plus sculptures, I'd allow a couple of hours). As you can see, the backpack was a hit with both dad and daughter.

Climbing the ladder

At the start of this year, I received a promotion. Well, of sorts: promotion in the sense of a job that is more fun rather than one that pays more money. On Monday afternoons I have the privilege of helping teach physical education to pre-primary kids (i.e. 5 to 6 year olds). What a blast!

Week two of my job, I approach 5 year old J., trying to build some rapport with him: "Your name's J isn't it?"

J. (without flinching): "No -- it's Captain Underpants!" Mental note to self: keep an eye on J.; he's feisty.

Last week, while fossicking around in the pre-primary shed, I saw a mother rummaging in one of the kid's school bags. Friendly and inquisitive me: "Hello."

"Hi. I'm just rescuing our crumpets from my daughter's bag before lunchtime. She grabbed them this morning instead of taking her lunch." This kind of craziness is commonplace in the world of pre-school.

I thought to myself: anyone looking for an antidote to the dryness of routine, the ho-hum of order and the tedium of predictability needs to spend time at a pre-primary.