Learning

Lately I've had this thought while watching my two year old repeat ABC's, songs, or retell stories that he's heard dozens of times; he's doing what we all do when we learn something new.
As Meg or I will read him his favorite books or even books that we've just picked up from the library, after a few times, he will start telling the story to us. He's memorized it. I find this really incredible to watch, basically he is showing us how he's learned these words and using them in the context in which he's learned them. It's a pretty basic learning style. We all learn math the same way, first we get a formula and then we practice using that formula in some context either word problems or basic number problems. But it's all the same pattern, we use it in the same context.

What is really awesome to see is when he uses the words he knows in another context other than the books we read. This is the next level of learning. One example of this is with Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree," this is one of my all-time favorite books as it is many other people's. We were on a hike one day and Carlos saw a stump (this happens at the end of the book, where the old man returns to the tree and all that is left to give is a place to sit). Carlos upon seeing the stump called it a "giving tree!" and promptly went over to sit on it. It was not just an old tree, or a decaying log, it was the stump from the book.

These moments happen to us constantly, we are constantly taking in what we read about, or see on tv and applying the language we hear to make sense of the world around us. For me, to see it happen in such pure form, makes me appreciate how awesome our minds are even as two year olds.