Avi is a fan of the shower, though never because he is eager to get clean. Instead, the Big Man really enjoys some of the toys he has in there. Recently, Avi has been entertaining himself in the shower and bath by sorting his letters and numbers, unprompted, into categories based on physical attributes on the shower door. After a few weeks of him “playing” this game every time he got in the tub, Mom started really paying attention and realized he’s doing some pretty high level organizing here. Reverting back to her teacher days, she decided to document a sample of his work. Not only does he put like letters/colors together — all the purple D’s in the same category — but he also sorted the 4’s together with the A’s given their triangular shaped tops and orange coloring. Another clever move; turning the green E on its side so it more closely resembled the green W’s. He also flips 6’s and 9’s so they will match accordingly in their category, and has been known to put 5’s and S’s together in the same category, fully knowing the actual difference of each.
Mommy proudly noted that this is actually a California state standard for Kindergarten students (Avi is not yet 2), which, to quote the Standard, says that students should be able to “Compare and sort common objects by one physical attribute (e.g., color, shape, texture, size, weight).” Meanwhile, Dad noted that this is the kind of thinking that cryptographers do when trying to break codes. At the very least, we can agree that it probably doesn’t bode well for our future attempts to speak past our son using ig-Pay atin-Lay…
Next up, advanced Cryptography
