Boyfriends and Girlfriends

The students who helped raise the most money for Sophie’s school got a limo ride to a pizza lunch party with the principal today. My favorite part of the conversation in the limo went like this:

3rd Grader: I have a girlfriend, and I’m marrying her on Halloween.
1st Grader: I can’t think about that right now.
Kindergtartner: I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend.

Touché.

Boys are Bigger

At the Butterfly Pavilion, a class of first graders has just studied the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach and determined through observation that the female is larger than the male.

Teacher: Can anyone think of why the female is bigger?

Student: Because the female is the boy and boys are bigger.

Class dismissed!

Also, clearly the place is called the Butterfly Pavilion because if they called it the Cockroach, Scorpion, and Tarantula Pavilion That Also Has Butterflies nobody would ever volunteer to chaperone that trip.

A Story of Woe

Someone in Sophie’s class wrote this and it came home with Sophie by mistake. Here it is, with spelling corrected but otherwise unaltered:

Dad said we have a new baby and she’s coming home today. I got out my doll and bat and all my favorite games to show to the baby. I found my favorite picture book. I read it out loud to the baby. But the baby didn’t pay any attention to me.

That honestly may be the greatest story I’ve ever read.

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

A girl sitting near us recently challenged her family with some arithmetic problems. Here’s one she tried:

Girl: What’s 9,000 plus 1,000?
Boy: A million.

Dad: Nope.

Boy: Nine thousand plus one thousand is ten thousand.
Dad: Right.

Boy: That’s also called a million.

Dad: Oh, right.

 

Brand Recognition

This sounds mediocre, but is in fact just excellent. Adam Ladd showed his daughter some well-known logos (Pepsi, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Nike) and recorded her description of them. Any kindergartner would probably give similar responses, and that’s precisely what’s interesting here.

Some she can name on sight (“that is the Disney”), some she recognizes but can’t name (“that is the coffee logo”), and others just get cute descriptions (“outside space — it looks like a shooting star with a planet”).

As much as adults protest that advertising must be a waste of money because nobody wants to read it, this sure suggests branding works.

(via Kottke)

Homeworkagon

From an online discussion pertaining to today’s middle school geometry homework:

I can’t seem to draw anything that ends in “agon”

I assume that means the assorted “angle” and “ircle” shapes proved easier.

Ruining My Life

Sophie made a sad announcement about her day on the way home:

Sophie: Today, Brandi ruined my life.

Me: You mean your day?

Sophie: No, my whole life.

Me: What did she do?

Sophie: Well, she did a nice thing too. She let me take a drink of her water. It was colored water, and I liked it. And she had it in a water bottle, and she wiped off all her germs, and she told me that she would share with me, and then she let me have a drink.

Me: I don’t understand. That sounds like a nice thing to do. What bad thing did she do that ruined your life?

Sophie: I already forgot.

 

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Sophie at dinner:

If this were in the newspaper, it would say, “The silliest family in the world is the Fensters. They have a dad, a mom, and a daughter. The daughter is the silliest, then the dad… no, then the mom, then the dad. And if you want to visit them, they’re in (Our Neighborhood), (Our Street), (Our House Number).”

And if people read that, they’d keep the newspaper forever.