Lonely Planet

The lastest craze for A is the planets. He has planets hanging up in his room and recently got a book all about them from nana and papa, which we read and re-read every day, along with a booklet that him and his dad found on the internet and printed out.

We have all been assigned a planet identity. As testament to his age, in true Freudian fashion, mom is Jupiter and dad is Pluto, which he likes to emphasize is really a "dwarf planet" due to its small size. He has assigned himself to be Neptune. So, we all call each other by our planet names. This has even resulted in the creation of an imaginery planet friend -Mercury. Neptune and Mercury are best buds. This morning Neptune got out of bed and said, "Okay, me and mercury are going out here to play." Later, he came running in to tell me that Mercury wanted to ride in the carseat on the way to school.

The parents have also been assigned friends, Earth for me and Venus for Pluto. I am not willing to indulge in any possible symbolism for these assignments!

A funny exchange:
Neptune: Hey, Jupiter, how's your great red spot doing?
Jupiter: Oh, fine, how's your great dark spot doing?

Since Neptune is a blue planet, this was another funny conversation. "Neptune" was listing his various parts: "My head? It's blue. My feet? They're blue. My legs? They're blue." This continued through at least twenty different body parts, including "elbow-pits" (the inside of the elbow).

Finally, Neptune and Pluto made a "science chart" together, in which A. wrote in all of the planets and the number of moons. As we learned later, that is a typical activity in a Fourth Grade curriculum.

Confidentiality?

No posts for awhile with the holidays and celebrating A's fourth birthday, but I will get back on track!

Tonight, my husband came home from picking A up at school with a funny story from the teacher. Apparently, they are doing evaluations for all of the kids now and writing them during class. A. went over and took a look, and then began to read them - outloud!! The teacher said, "well, this has really never been an issue in a 3-year-old classroom before."