Oh! The Strange Ways Our Children Learn! - From the Angelfire Archive!

Some of you may not know that once, long, long, ago, there was no Families Again on Blogger. There was, however, a Families Again on another blog platform - Angelfire. The content was much the same, however, the Angelfire platform just wasn't working out for me so I decided to switch to Blogger. You are welcome to go back and peruse my old Angelfire Families Again blog if you would like by clicking here. But STOP! Don't do it until after you have finished reading this post!

 

Anyway, from time to time I like to "retread" one of my Angelfire posts and repost it on this blog. That is especially true if it gives you some glimpse into our family and why they do things the way that they do or learn the way that they learn. This article fits that perfectly. It is about the beginning of Joshua's love for Geography and other countries. Although this post was written nearly four years ago, Joshua is still going strong and is very advanced in his knowledge of those fields. In fact, he has added languages to his interests and is presently learning Russian. It is slow going, but it is steady going. He amazes me with what he can remember. But, that is another story. One thing at a time! Back to the post.

 

Here, with a couple grammar mistakes corrected, is Oh! The strange Ways Our Children Learn! Complete and in it's entirety!

 

 

 

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Oh! The Strange Ways Our Children Learn!
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: The Kids

The other day, out of the blue, Joshua decided to play a flag game with me. He would describe a state or country flag and I would guess where it was from. Joshua, for those of you who don't know, is our 10 year old (third grade) asperger's child (on the autism spectrum).

 

At the beginning he was describing our state flag, the U.S flag, the Canadian flag...flags that he has been exposed to. Then, all of a sudden he described a flag that was white with a red circle - the Japanese flag...I thought, "Hmmm. That's interesting. I didn't know he knew that." Still, the Japanese flag is a fairly familiar flag.

 

Then, he asked me if I knew what country had a blue flag with a "little England flag" in the corner. I was stumped! First of all, I was stumped because I didn't know he knew what the Flag of England looked like, then, I was stumped because I couldn't think of the flag he was talking about. I answered "Australia". "Nope". Then I thought "New Zealand?" No again. Both of those are blue with a "little England flag" in the corner but those weren't the one he was thinking of. Finally I gave up. He answered "The flag of Fiji!"

 

I asked "How in the world do you know what the flag of Fiji looks like?" He said "That's where Jimmy Snuka is from."

 

Jimmy Snuka is a professional wrestler. Asperger's kids can get fixated on things and learn all that they can about certain topics. Some folks call them "little professors" because they can be extra knowledgeable about topics that fascinate them. Joshua can tell you all about helicopters and, if he sees one, can tell you the type of helicopter it is, because that was a phase he went through. He's also gone through a football phase and, when he was young, a Thomas the Train phase. Ask him about one of those things and he can tell you all about them  .

 

Anyway, lately it's been professional wrestling. I never thought I would allow my kids to watch professional wrestling until a little old lady started to come to the mission that we run. She faithfully watches professional wrestling and got my boys interested. So, in order for them to carry on a conversation with dear Miss Glenda, we allow them to watch under our supervision. Well, Joshua got hooked, and, yep, is going through a professional wrestling phase. For Christmas Grandma bought him a professional wrestling encyclopedia that he has devoured. It is literally in pieces. We need to buy him another one. In the encyclopedia they have the flag of the country that a wrestler is from. That's where he learned all of these flags.

 

Have you ever heard of the phrase "strike while the iron is hot"? This fall we are going to be doing unit studies of the countries where the different wrestlers are from. Should be interesting! You never know where your kids are going to learn things!