The Middle

Love it when Emilie starts making connections on her own.  She knows her left from her right, but I guess she never learned what "middle" was until recently!  And she learned it making connections from 2 books we have been reading and also from a math lesson.  The last math lesson we did was learning numbers up to 5 and 5 is special because it has a "middle" (imagine middle finger on your hand).  5 has a middle but 4 does not.  It was a 1 minute concept we talked about and we moved onto something else.  All last week we read The Story of Ferdinand, about a Spanish bull who doesn't want to fight.  The last scene in the book depicts Ferdinand sitting in the middle of the bull ring, and instead of fighting, he smells roses in the hair of the ladies around him.  Tonight we read The Kissing Hand, a sweet story of a racoon and his mother exchanging kisses in the middle of each others' palms to help him feel safe when he is scared.  All of a sudden, Emilie blurts out, "Oh, the kiss is in the middle, just like Ferdinand sat in the middle of the ring, and just like 5 has a middle (pointing to her middle finger)."  Wow!  Emilie is 4 1/2 and knows more than I did when I was her age.  Love it to see her learning, even if it is as small as learning a positional word!