We bike our children to school from time to time. The weather was not too hot and not too cold for a morning ride today so put the bike seats on the backs of our bikes, pumped up the tires, put on the helmets and headed off to school in time to make the carpool drop-off period.
Normally I have my daughter on the back of my bike, but lately we've had a bit of a problem with my son spending more time with daddy than anyone else and he's begun to get attached. So we've been switching things up. He's heavier, but I found out he's far more interesting as a biking partner than my daughter is by the end of the trip.
He has a lot more words and can carry on a full conversation with you. She says things, but mostly sings "kwinkle star" or This Old Man and kicks you in the back while you pedal. My son asks questions, looks around, makes observations and enjoys hearing about things as you pedal along.
This morning we talked about trees. I pointed out the pine trees and how their bark would flake off and you could use it to draw on the driveway like chalk. We stopped before exiting the wooded park to get him a piece of bark (which he held on to the rest of the ride).
We then talked about the pine leaves and how they were called "needles" because they were so thin. I told him we had pine needles in our yard and that were so soft to lie on once they'd fallen from the trees and turned from green to brown.
We caught up to daddy and his sister and stopped to pick up a fallen twig of pine tree with some fading needles still attached to it. He proudly held it up to daddy and told him he had, "pine straw".
That's when I had one of those moments when you realize what a monumental task a child goes through to learn language. He was holding pine bark that came from a pine tree from the tree trunk. He had a tree branch that had on it pine needles. Once those needles were on the ground, separated from the tree itself and had turned brown, those same needles would be referred to as pine straw.
It's a lot of words that are used in specific ways. But he didn't seem to mind. If he got something wrong, I'd say that the bark was from the trunk, not the limbs and that the needles weren't considered straw yet because they were still green and on a branch.
I told my husband on the way home after dropping the children off to school that he was a more interesting passenger and it was going to be fun when she got to that age too.
The Big Boy Update: He was very interested in the piece of pine bark he held on to all morning on the way to school. He was going to show it to his teachers and tell them what he learned about pine trees this morning when I dropped him off.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: The puffer fish. There is this book that has a puffer fish in it. It seems to be the one item in the book that is my daughter's favorite. She loves that page, loves to point to the puffer fish and loves to say, "puffer fish" in her tiny girl voice. She will turn back to that page and look for the pop-up version of the puffer fish on the final page. I tried to video it the other night when Mimi was reading the book to her but I couldn't hold the camera still I was giggling so much.
Fitness Update: Eleven miles biking the children to school today in great early-fall weather.
No comments:
Post a Comment