Smarty Pants

Today's post is about an old video that got a breath of fresh air this week :)

Our boys love learning. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it has to do with all of the "old fashioned" toys, books, and puzzles they are surrounded by... you know, the ones that require actual interaction and imaginitive play. Or the lack of new-fangled electronic toys that do all of the thinking for them. Or maybe its just because Jon and I are nerds and we really wouldn't know what to do with them all day if we didn't talk about and teach them the things we enjoy. Whatever the reason, we've got two little Curious George's on our hands and Jon and I take pleasure in indulging whatever interest the boys have at any given time.

First it was outer space. Not sure what sparked it, but the boys wanted to know everything there was to know about outer space. First we learned the planets. Including Pluto, which, when you ask them, they will assertively tell you is no longer a planet because "it got demoted!" Then we learned all sorts of fun facts about each one... Did you know Venus is hotter than Mercury? Or that Mars has the tallest mountains in the known universe? Neither did we! Do you know who the first man to gold on the moon was? (I'll leave that one for you to figure out on your own :) Within a few days, we had scaled Play-Doh recreation of the nine planets hanging from the dining room window, every kids book Barnes and Noble had on outer-space (most were a bit over their head being that there aren't many toddler-specific books about the wonders of the universe!), and we spent hours a day drawing alnd labeling the planets. The boys first real, recognizable drawing was of planet Earth. One day, at about 22 months old, Caleb looked up from his paper and said, "Look mama! Earf!" and I'll be damned, the kid had drawn a blue circle and scribbled blue and green spots inside. Matthew quickly followed suit, with a bit more lopsided of a circle, and minutes later, our refridgerator was covered top to bottom in "Earfs". Had to use tape when we ran out of magnets :)

Their next passion was maps. Quite awhile ago, Jon's mom gave us two old placemats to use at the table when the boys started finger foods. One was a map of the USA, the other a map of the world. Albeit an old, outdated map of the world... probably circa 1988! All of a sudden we were spending each meal answering "What's dat?" as the boys pointed to the states on the placemat. "What's dat?" continued long after each meal, and we were spending up to an hour sitting at the table- breakfast, lunch and dinner- talking about maps. When we remodeled the upstairs as a playroom, Jon had vinyl cut a giant map of the US and stuck it to the wall in the "learning corner" and this served to fill in the time between meals when we weren't using the placemats! It didn't take long for the boys to master all the states and move on to the capitals... and then they became intrigued by the world map! They quickly mastered all of South America and most of Europe... luckily Grammy bought them an updated world map for Christmas so that at least they had accurate portrayal of Europe and the Eastern Bloc! Once again, we dove in head first. For Christmas they got map puzzles, map flash cards, and more map placemats. We printed out dozens of map coloring sheets and spent our days on the floor with a box of crayons and a blank print out of Africa. Caleb entered his brown phase- filling in every state or country with the color brown for days and days on end, while Matthew prefered to talk about the names of everything moreso than color them in. The state flash cards that Santa brought were so intriguing that we actually got the boys to sit still long enough to catch their fantastic feat of toddler memory on tape. Here is the video of the boys doing their states and capitals... and here is the clip that got picked up by the news show Right ThisMinute earlier this week :)

Their next feat was the elements of the periodic table, though I have to admit this was simply to appease the curiosity Jon and I had about the extent of their memories! On the Tuesday after Christmas break, Jon assigned his eighth grade students 41 of the elements to memorize for a quiz... when they groaned, he told them he bet he could teach the boys in the same amount of time that he was giving them to study! So... we made our own set of 41 flascards and away we went! Luckily, we also had a placemat of the periodic table (hey, I already admitted that we're nerds!). The boys were fascinated with the cards, chemical symbols, and the table. They were already somewhat familiar with the elements, as they have loved watching this dorky video about the elements since they were babies (see?! nerds!) And four days later they took their quiz- A+! Yup. We're officially a family of nerds and we're loving every minute of it!