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.