Scientists
It’s been a while since we’ve posted. A lot has happened. The baby is eating solids, and trying to crawl. I’m trying to crawl out of bed. :)
I thought I’d share a few glimpses into life at Casa Jonsson. Our three oldest sons have taken after their father as men of deep thought (though our third is also known as our “man of action.”) At parent-teacher conferences last week, I learned that our second-grader has been doing experiments related to surface tension with his class. Apparently, after seeing how many pennies were required to break the surface tension of the glass, he immediately inquired how many would be required to break the tension of an ocean.
Our first-grader is also very interested in science. In the way of six-year-olds, he is highly literal, and takes everything at face value. I caught him in the bathroom about a week ago, spitting on the tile. Mommies do not tend to encourage children to spit on the tile. But I was dissuaded from my rebuke when I learned that he was doing it to see if he could paralyze some tiny ants on the floor, since after all, the saliva of spiders paralyzes its prey. He was convinced that his saliva could also paralyze, but methinks it was just the sheer quantity of it that drowned the little creatures.
During his conference, I learned that they are learning about how symbols can equal other things. For example, the children were asked to put various letters, each of which had a number value, in order, from smallest to greatest. This caused him great consternation. “Does v really equal 28? I mean is v the same as 28?” he was reported to have asked. The response was that just for this exercise, v was equal to 28. “Okay, because just so you know E = mc².” He read a book about Einstein over a year ago, but apparently, this tidbit of information stuck. Be careful what you say around children! They remember everything!
Finally, you might be wondering what Number Three Son is working on. For him, it’s all about the science of comparisons. Velocity: “Our car is faster than their car!” (Our car being a minivan … their car being a Corvette.) Mass: My muscles are bigger than Hercules’s. My muscles are bigger than God’s. Volume: I can eat more than Papi can.
I’m sure over time his experiments will prove that he has some faulty hypotheses. 
