Preguntas

At Joaquin's preschool they work on a letter every week (both upper case and lower case, although Joaquin never seems to remember the lower case). This week was I. Joaquin traced the I's and drew one all the while wondering about the igloo picture. If I is for Igloo, what is an Igloo? He asked me about it as soon as we got in the car. I explained that in certain places it's so cold that not many trees grow so the people there make their houses out of ice.

(He probably was wondering what trees had to do with it, in his experience, houses are made out of stucco.) Then he wanted to make an igloo when we got home. We took out our ice cubes and attempted a house. Turns out it's surprisingly hard. For one thing little heart ice cubes don't stack well. For another, they start to melt and become really slippery! We then tried using our plastic ice cubes as a base but it was still only marginally successful. We're left with admiration for Eskimos.

The 'what is that' or 'why' question is a frequent one at our house. I think I can truthfully say that while most toddlers ask questions, Joaquin is a league of his own. By a long shot. I don't know if we unintentionally reinforce it because we answer usually, but I seem to spend much of my day explaining things. It's cute to a point but it occasionally reminds me of my least favorite part of teaching. Where the 45th (literally) kid asks you the exact same question that you just answered for 44 other children, a question which you also answered previously in lecture and then you want to kill them, but pull patience from somewhere inside of you and give them an answer.... yeah that part. I guess I just resent having my conversation hijacked since the person asking questions is essentially controlling the flow of talk and I don't have that many questions to ask Joaquin! Still, he is better than my students in many ways. For example, many ninth graders never seem to be able to use information to extrapolate an answer. They stay at a low level of Bloom's taxonomy only accurately able to answer concrete questions like, "what color is the sky?" etc. Joaquin is already putting information together to come up with new complex questions. Story 1) During a car ride he asks, "Do space shuttles have spark plugs?", he pauses then says, "Well they have a lot of fire so they must have spark plugs". Yeah, turns out spark plugs cause sparks that ignite the air/fuel mixture. Who knew? Joaquin for one, and then he decided that since space shuttles have fire they must have sparks and therefore spark plugs. See, he's miles beyond some of my former students. Story 2) I told Joaquin that electricity and water don't go together (forget why) and it would break electronics, etc. and a day later he asks me about it. After I confirm what I said the day before he asks, "What about water heaters? They have water and electricity." Sheesh, so I explained that the water was in one chamber and the heater was in another, or in insulated wires, etc. Then he says, "The chamber must be thin so that when you use up the hot water you can open it and fill it back up. Then you have to tape it back together." There's definitely a lot of processing going on in there.