Missing the point a bit

At five years old, you can't really expect kids to understand a lot of the abstract, especially when it comes to something like religion. Being a Catholic school, the children recite the "Our Father" every day, and have now memorized the words. We also have a section of our room with different religious objects for the children to look at and explore. I watched two girls over in the corner one day, putting on the Rosary beads as a necklace, flipping through the books, and picking up two small crosses that were on the table. They turned around and saw me watching and told me in all seriousness, "These are our 'Tres-Passes".

These kids are used to the bathroom 'Passes' that they must take in order to use the restroom, and for all they knew, the prayer they said every day was about a different kind of pass - a "Tres-Pass".

Concept of Age, and Extinction

Twice today I had the pleasure of overhearing 4 & 5 year old talk about what is 'old'. The first situation came up when I was mentioning to my co-teacher that my mom made great lasagna. One boy looked up from his lunch and said, "but your mom isn't alive anymore. You live by yourself". I asked him if he had a grandma. And he said yes. I told him that a grandma is a grown-ups mom. And that sometimes great-grandmothers are alive too. This baffled him. That these big tall adults in his classroom actually have families too.

Later on the circle, two of our girls were talking. One told the other that her grandma was old. Which visibly offended the latter girl. To which the first girl replied "OK, fine, just 'sort of' old". This pleased the second girl.

And lastly, today we were reading a story where a dinasaur looked in the window. The story later said that it must have been pretend b/c dinasaurs are extinct. I stopped and asked the class if they knew what 'extinct' meant. A remarkable number of kids raised their hands. I asked one of them, and they said, "they smell bad". Well said.

Magic

As I was babysitting, the three year old girl who was entranced by the Clifford movie we were watching, asked "How do I go inside the DVD? I want to get inside the movie with Clifford.". Unsure of how to respond without crushing her hopes of entering DVD land, I told her the first answer I could think of, Magic. She quietly pondered this for a few moments, after which she stated, "I'll have to wait until my mom comes home and ask her to teach me. She can show me magic and I will be able to go into the DVD and say hi to Clifford and Emily Elizabeth and all their friends". If only magic were something that simple! Or maybe it is, I guess I never asked my mom!

Baldness, from a child's eyes

On the playground afterschool, the father of one of the kids came to pick him up. Usually the mother arrives for him, so he wanted to meet some of his son's new friends. They called over one of his son's closest buddies in class, and he comes running across the playground to say hello. Without introducing himself, saying hello, or talking to his friend, he looks straight at the father and states "You have very little hair!" The father had to agree.