"And Sir Isaac Newton Lived Happily Ever After"

[dr_pretentious]

Dan's set of famous scientist finger puppets has seen a lot of use lately, with the result that Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Isaac Newton have become the major figures in the Grand Guignol of my kids' daily entertainment. Conrad finds it especially hilarious when Isaac Newton boasts of his accomplishments to an audience of admiring beanie babies. (I had to crib my description of Newton's CV from Neil DeGrasse Tyson's charming summary.) Gareth demanded that I give a performance for Dan this evening: "Now say the part about, 'And then I turned 26!'" The sentence that titles this blog post is entirely Gareth's invention. He likes to tack it onto the end of the discovery of gravity.

Conrad discovered verb tenses just last week. He narrates what he's doing a lot, so we got to listen to his thought process as he chased a helium balloon around the living room: "Get boon, get boon, get boon. Got boon!" He was so surprised at what he'd said, he let go of the balloon string to concentrate on repeating himself. I understand calculus about as well as he does, but I know a developmental leap when I see one.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Love this, thanks for sharing! James is in "Why?" mode. When he asked me yesterday why it was getting dark, I started in on our part of the Earth turning away from the sun. I can't wait until one of them asks me why the sky is blue. Eleanor, by the way, said about the science specialist at her school "she knows lots of cool things". Yeah, girl!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

A lot of answers to Gareth's questions begin with, "Remember that Coriolis force model at the Liberty Science Center?" We could just spend all day spinning that thing when we go there. It would be a totally worthwhile way to spend an afternoon, considering how many times we reference it between visits.