Wanna explain cell genetics to a six year old (of any stripe)? Especially when a younger brother is part of the lesson? We were reading I Know How My Cells Make Me Grow when we strayed into genetics. I tried to explain that God puts little messages into each cell so it knows how to make a new tiny piece of bone that is uniquely Samuel and a new little piece of skin that is uniquely Mommy.
"You know what a message is -- it's like when Grandpaw sent you a postcard with the ship on it." I have no idea if Samuel understood the message part, but he and Baby U both seemed fascinated by the diagrams of muscle cells and skin cells.
This has been one of the more fascinating sides of homeschooling for me. It's one thing to know a subject well enough to engage in normal adult conversation; but it seems like you need even more understanding to translate that information into the simple terms needed to explain it to a child. Big brother Isaac had already taught me that I need to keep everything as concrete as possible and to give a boy something he can touch and hold whenever possible.
With Samuel, the latter seems even more important. He has one advantage though: he is so driven to understand how something works he is likely to watch, manipulate, or play with something for a while just to meet that ingrained curiosity. Yes, uniquely Samuel ...
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