He’s a Passionate Guy

(In the absense of the adults having anything to say, Jon is prolific… –P)

I Love Hugs

I love hugging my dad. I like giveing my daddy a kiss. I love mom. I like giveing my mommy a hug. I love working on the computer with my mommy and daddy.
Jon
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Fun at School

I love going to the gym. I love playing T-ball with Tamara. I hit the ball with the bat. I like going to the adventure center. I love crawling up the ramp. I like looking at the fish. I love writing some stories in the classroom with Tami.

Jon

Two creative writing pieces

(I’m getting behind transcribing these pieces… – L)

My Playground

I love swinging on the swings. I love sliding down a slide. I love going up the stares with my dad. I love going to the playground. It is fun.

Jon
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I Love the Zoo

I like to see animals at the zoo. The lions rore. The monkeys say oo oo ahhhhh ahhhhhh. I love rideing the camels.

Jon

Good old rock. Nothing beats rock…

From an amusing story about Christie’s and Sotheby’s duking it out for the privilege of auctioning off a $25 million art collection by playing rock, paper, scissors at the behest of the client.

Kanae Ishibashi, the president of Christie’s in Japan…spent the weekend researching the psychology of the game online and talking to friends, including Nicholas Maclean, the international director of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department.

Mr. Maclean’s 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice, turned out to be the experts Ms. Ishibashi was looking for. They play the game at school, Alice said, “practically every day.”

“Everybody knows you always start with scissors,” she added. “Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper.” Flora piped in. “Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest,” she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors – because, as Alice explained, “Everybody expects you to choose rock.”

Sotheby’s took a different tack. “There was some discussion,” said Blake Koh, an expert in Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s in Los Angeles… “But this is a game of chance, so we didn’t really give it that much thought. We had no strategy in mind.”

Christie’s picked scissors; Sotheby’s picked paper. Guess Sotheby’s going to have to start taking the game a bit more seriously!

Cardinal Wolsey

The following list is from the usenet, and featured in an interesting exchange of letters between film critic Roger Ebert and a dwarf actor who objected to Ebert’s use of “midget” in a previous column.

It’s a list of Cockney rhyming slang apparently used among disabled Cockneys in East London:

Mutt and Jeff = deaf
Canary Wharf = dwarf
Cardinal Wolsey = cerebral palsy
Raspberry Ripple = cripple
Rubber and plastic = spastic
Tulips and roses = multiple sclerosis
Bacon rind = blind
Diet Pepsi = epilepsy
Benny and the Jets = Tourettes
Wasps and bees = amputee

Jon’s spelling test sentences

(spelling words are in italics –L)

I love going trick or treating on Halloween.
I love having some treats on Halloween.
I like going to some houses.
I said I love spelling.
I like wearing a pirate hat.
I like building a house.
I miss you.
I like to see the butterfly fly.
I love running into the house.
I like going up and down in the elevator.
Jon

Yet even more about spelling…

Holy moley – as Jon’s teacher Tami said in her note home today: “Every time I raise the bar he meets it, even faster than I could have expected or hoped for!”

Tami decided that for his spelling tests she would use each word in a simple sentence, which he would then type out. Today, Jon decided he wanted to be tested (remember, he only got his new list yesterday). Then he asked to generate the sentences himself. Tami thought this would make the exercise more meaningful for him so she agreed.

Well, he sailed through coming up with and typing the 10 sentences, and spelled all the words perfectly. He self-corrected himself two times with that tough word “building”, but finally nailed it. The only word he asked for help with was “butterfly” (a word not on his list), used in the sentence

I like to see the butterfly fly.

He first asked if “butt was “t” or “t-t”, and then asked if “er” was “r” or “e-r”. The spelling word was “fly”, so he had no trouble with that part. And then laughed uproariously because there were two instances of “fly” right next to each other.

Jon’s new spelling list includes the words “weather” and “channel”. This one’ll go very quickly!

Tami’s goal is to now get Jon to do writing (either his creative writing or spelling sentences) every day. When I think about where he was at the beginning of the school year, it makes my head spin!