Am I smarter than a first grader?

We were talking about how to spell a friend’s name, Isaiah, and how it was difficult to spell because it had so many vowels.


1.
"Jack, do you know what vowels are?"

"No."

"They are a,e, i, o and u."

I know that.

"Oh, ok. Well did you know that EVERY word has to have a vowel? Isn’t that interesting? Can you think of ANY word that doesn’t have a vowel?"

"Ah, yeah, 'why'. Like, Why are you doing that?"

"Uh,ahem, WOW Jack, you are right! The word why doesn’t have any of those letters in it! You are so smart!"

2.
"Jack, did you know tomorrow I have to buy new tires for the van? Do you know how much they are going to cost? $500!"

"Do you really want to spend that much money on those?"

"Well, no I don’t, but you know, you have to, for safety, because the old tires wear out."

"Oh, that sucks."

"Ah, ahem, Jack, you know, that really is sort of an ugly word. "

"Oh yeah, I meant to say, that’s a bummer!"

"Yeah, ahem, well, I know Mommy says that sometimes and I need to not do that because it really just isn’t a great word."

Funny how words we might throw around freely sound so much uglier coming out of a kids mouth. Or do they sound just as ugly in our mouths but we are just used to it?

3.
Discussion regarding giving away money, toys, candy, etc. to our friends. For some reason, this has become an appealing idea, to just give our money to our friends, soooooo we’ve had to have a big discussion about what friendship means, we don’t buy our friends, we don’t want them just to like us for our stuff, etc. For example, he recently said, "I'm thinking about giving Brooks $20, but I'm not sure yet." Ah, no, you are not doing that!
Apparently we are not the only ones going through this. Jack came home on Friday, throwing around "this was the best day EVER!" with $2 in his backpack that a friend had given him. Hmm. So, I tried to explain that he had to give it back, we don’t give each other money, etc. I decided to email the mom and just give her a heads up in case she didn’t know her son was doing this. (I would want to know, wouldn't you?!). Luckily, she was grateful and not annoyed. So then we are going to Wal Mart, with money given to Jack by grandparents, for his birthday. So he says, "So, Grandma, and Grandma and Pappy, and Grandpa and Donna, just GAVE me this money, right? So why can they do this, but I can’t? "

"Hmmm. Well, that’s complicated."

Luke: "What does complicated mean?"

"Well, it means it’s hard to explain."

Whew, well, look boys, we're at Wal Mart!

I’m off the hook to try to think up an explanation for that one. It's too hot and my brainpower has already melted for the day.