Monday afternoons with Grandmother B

Nearly every Monday afternoon, Blake goes for "special time with B."  He and Grandmother B (Bitsy) play it by ear -- sometimes it's playdough, sometimes they go to the library, often they read books and discover a whole new topic.  This blog entry is directly from Grandmother B about her time with Blake last Monday:

"Here is an eel video that Blake wanted to view on Monday when couldn't get online. That's okay because instead we read books! We read about eels coming from the Sargasso Sea. Where is that, he asked? So we went to the bookshelves downstairs at Grandmother B's house. We pulled out the atlas and said  that new word a few times.

In native Utah dialogue, one might  hear a preposition dangle such as, "Where's it at"...so maybe that's a good way to remember why we call this big book the ATLAS. That's where we find where things are at! And we found the Sargasso Sea sitting near the Bahamas in the middle the Atlantic Ocean. Did you know all eels from America and Europe lay eggs in the Sargasso Sea? When they are born they look like tiny glass fish but they turn into baby  eels and start their swim journey. Blake looked satisfied learning this. But then he asked to see the eel that that has the fish that it never bites. So we went upstairs and found the bookshelf in the bedroom called "Fish Do the Strangest Things" by the Hornblows, who must know something about deep sea fishing! On the book's last page Blake pointed to the eel with its friend the wrasse, who swims in and out of the eel's mouth to clean its teeth. The book likened the wrasse  to a doctor, more like a dentist but I likened this tiny fish to a toothbrush. Blake liked my simile probably because early on he enjoyed brushing his teeth as a tiny boy.

But for the record, don't think Blake is all serious and studious. Last week at the public library we looked for books on his requested topics: dinosaurs and volcanoes. I said he might not like the silly book on volcanoes since a flying school bus goes under the ocean to see the volcano. Blake said, "Well, I like silly!" So we checked it out along with the four other non-fiction books. That's a term we'll learn next time."