Say what?

Let's start by stating the obvious: that sometimes the most simple language that we use as adults can have hidden meanings, but that to a child, it makes complete (and, innocent, undefiled) sense.

For example, once, in a case where spelling was concerned, a child wanted to tell me that, for that day's activities, she had 'done a sheet'. Of course, as most first graders do, she spelled it phonetically, thus replacing the double 'e' in the word 'sheet' with an 'i'.

Today, I was again having a good chuckle at a priceless paper a student turned in. The whole probably made complete sense to him, and had no further relevance than the direct meaning for which he intended. The activity, to do a double-entry journal, is one in which students record events from the book they are reading in one column, and record their thinking (questions, comments, predictions) in another. In the particular book said student chose, called Fly Guy, one of the very first pictures shows a little boy being greeted by his overly-excited grandmother in big crash-hug style. So, on the first line, he asked a simple question that any kiddo might...


The story continues and follows the old tale of The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (no pun intended). You know, the one where the lady swallows a spider to catch the fly, and then a bird to catch the spider, and so on and on until she's swallowed the whole farm? Well, if the first of this child's great thinking didn't blow you away, he earned an additional bonus point by wondering (in true, second-grade, ungrammatical fashion), 'why she never go to the dentist to take him out?'.

Genius, Ladies and Gentlemen. We're encouraging genius here.

In the end, this child received full and enthusiastic credit for the first answer, and a bonus point for the second. As well as the respect of every teacher in the hallway.