He knew all his letters, upper and lower case, by 18 months and recognized that they went together in a pattern, and that the pattern meant something. He started reading shortly after he turned two. I actually doubted the accuracy of my memory of this, so I looked back through pictures and found one of him and Nana sitting on the sofa shortly after his second birthday, playing their word games on the Magnadoodle. She would write words and he would read them. It started with simple words like cat and hat, but I remember that these particular pictures were taken on the day she wrote–and he could differentiate between–worm, work, and word. It was slightly more than a week after his second birthday. By three, he could recognize or sound out most words. He could pick up nearly any book in the house and read it by four.

Reading is still one of his favorite pastimes. It’s his refuge and escape when he’s stressed. At times, it’s his compulsion — he’s the kid who has to read it if it’s there. Cereal boxes, junk mail, my computer screen if he’s nearby (I have to be careful!), cookbooks. I understand that compulsion well, because it’s one I share with him. I can’t not read, either.

I sometimes wonder why he took so naturally to reading. While there’s no denying that he’s a very gifted child, giftedness doesn’t always manifest as early reading (and early reading doesn’t necessarily indicate giftedness). Sometimes I imagine that a love of reading is like a nutrient, and it passed to him in utero through the umbilical cord or he drank it in when he nursed, like feeding the trained planaria to the untrained ones and having the untrained ones know how to run the mazes. Only not gross like that.

It might be because he saw reading all around him and absorbed it through some strange sort of literary osmosis. I would read while I nursed him, read whenever I had a spare moment. I read to him, Nana read to him, and the Granny Brigade (an assortment of great and great-great grandmothers and great-great aunties) read to him. My room has always been filled with stacks of books. I stick them everywhere, on the off chance that I’ll need something to read while I’m in that particular room. We have kitchen books, office books, a stack of bathroom books underneath the sink, bedroom books, basement books, and even a few car books, which I don’t read while driving, of course.

We’ve had to take his book light away, because he was staying up until the wee hours reading (and was a bear as a result). We have to check his room often for boys awake at 11pm, crouching by the door to have enough light to read. We have to police the number of bathroom trips after 10, because they’re to read, not to tinkle.

That’s a wonderful “problem” to have, isn’t it?

This week, Captain Science went back and redid a few lessons from Paragraph Town using his other reading as the subject matter. He finished (finally, Mr. Dawdler!) reading Wind in the Door and Nordic Gods and Heroes. He completed several sentences in Practice Town.

Officer Daddyman and Captain Science worked together on some algebra word problems of Daddyman’s devising. Captain Science is greatly looking forward to starting Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, now that he has a little taste of that kind of math. Algebra was always my favorite mathematical subject, so I’m excited about it, too!

Captain Science has advanced to the next set of piano books and continues to show a natural talent for it. He’s working with 8th notes and runs, and is also doing a little jazz, which is fun to hear! Two hours a week is a lot of piano lesson, but I think the time investment is going to pay off in the long run.

Our co-op is about done. Brain class is over (and none too soon, as tempers have been flaring and the last class involved Eclectic Girl calling Captain Science a hoarder, and Captain Science calling Eclectic Girl a stealer, neither of which is true), game class will continue with no foreseeable end, and the short story class will only have one more meeting together. Along with writing, the students have learned about editing, submitting drafts to magazines and journals, and writing contests. I wish Captain Science had been willing to invest more time in working on his story, as I’m having a hard time getting a good full-length draft from him, but he’s not the only one in the class balking at it a bit. I think we’ll take a step back and let him work on it more over the summer.

Physics lab was pretty much the same-ol’, same-ol’. At least Captain Science and Eclectic Girl didn’t squabble, right?

Captain Science did a ton of poetry work this week, since we didn’t get much done in Building Poems last week. He covered limericks, creating his own stanzas, metaphor, simile, apostrophe, and personification this week, writing poems for each topic. The following are his personification and apostrophe poems, which he decided to combine together in this format:

Sun and Moon

I.
The sunlight shines upon the sea
his goal is to light everything.
While lighting up the other side
the moon illuminates the tides.
For many years they battled far,
but now they always share the earth.

II.
O, brightest sun, you hottest light
begins the day and stops the night.
Yet O great moon, your noble rays
shall make much beauty and end the day.
For many aeons you two have fought
but at this time you battle not.

I’m sure you can imagine how proud I am of him!

Here is Captain Science’s latest poem from Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems, a poem in the Rime Royal form (7 lines of iambic pentameter in an ababbcc rhyme scheme):

The Great Greek Heroes

The great Greek beasts and heroes long ago
Had much adventures many, many times
Like Jason and the Argonauts had rowed
The monsters fell to them; They were sublime,
And later on in one great different time,
Achilles was the greatest hero yet.
He fought great Hector and he won, you bet!

We’re going to work on not overusing “many” and “great,” but the kid managed to stick “Argonauts” and and “adventures” into iambic pentameter. Not only that, he correctly used some of his Caesar’s English vocabulary. Yes, he pretty much rocks.

World War II

World War II stabbed terror into the hearts of thousands. Many lost a friend or loved one in this sword of death, and terrible, ruthless Germans crushed many souls in their hands. Planes swarmed the sky and brought whole cities to their knees, while tanks struck down any pathcrossers who bravely stood against them. Thousands of lives were devastated by the evil hands of Germany, but America won in the finish.

Captain Science’s assignment for Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems today was to choose a topic, choose four words, and write four four-line poems using the above four meters, each containing those four words and addressing the topic. Because it’s a rather challenging task, I agreed to do it as well. We had about an hour to work on our poems.

Captain Science’s topic: Roman wars
Captain Science’s words: The (I told him that’s a cheater word and next time it won’t count), Roman, loud, and war

Iambic Pentameter
The Roman drums of war sounded out loud
You could hear many men crying out loud
And then there was something that made them scream
A laser was attacking with a beam

Trochaic Tetrameter
Roman solders war my men and
Arrows shriek loud through the air, then
catapults chuck boulders ’round — whoa
One arrow ’bout grazed my hair!

Dactylic Trimeter (he forgot he was doing tetrameter)
Bash! Oh no — bloom! There goes my tower
’cause of the catapult’s boulder, it
flew so loud, yet it did,
I had some horrible curses, so
I cursed the Romans then the war
stopped strangely, ’cause of the dead army.

(This was supposed to be anapestic tetrameter, but he totally lost the meter on this one — I like it, though)
I’m a sorceror, so I cursed
all the Romans. The two armies
had warred day and night for
10 YEARS! Finally we have
won, and against Rome’s
army, now we are going
home so we can celebrate so loud.

My topic: Seasons
My words: apple, flowers, faces, feel

Iambic Pentameter
The sun beats down, the flowers brown and wilt
Our faces, also brown, are turning pink
My mother’s apple pie served a la mode
I feel a warmth that isn’t from the heat

Trochaic Tetrameter
Apple picking in the orchard
Falling leaves brush by our faces
Flowers of the summer fading
Autumn colors in their places

Dactylic Tetrameter
Oh, can you feel it? The winter is fading and
flowers are peeking their faces up out of the
snow and the apple trees soon will be blooming, so
fare the well, winter, for springtime is entering

Anapestic Pentameter
Faces cold, feel the snow soft and fine on the pines, evening time.
Frozen cheeks, apple red, snowflakes light on your head. Softly said
Whispered word, barely heard in the night’s dimming light.
Close your eyes, safe and warm. Winter storm singing nigh, lullaby.

I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
And how much pretzels do I get
Well, nine’s how much I pick.

He didn’t quite integrate his understanding of the spondee into his poetic meter, but he’s getting there. He can explain it just fine, but since he’s only nine and still occasionally emphasizes words oddly in conversation, I don’t expect his usage to be perfect yet. We discussed that “many,” not “much,” would be grammatically correct here. He rewrote it to conserve the iambic rhythm and to try to use the spondee correctly. “Many” in the last line is intended to be the spondee, and when he reads the poem aloud, he stresses both syllables of “many.”

I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
How many pretzels do I get?
Well, nine’s how many I pick.

The Ghost Judge

The midnight moon is spooky,
And scary ghouls roam everywhere.
There’s even a ghost judge,
and it looks like he’s sued someone,
for he closed around a zombie
and he never came again.
Yes, he closed around a zombie
and he never came again.

The Roman Slave (end rhyme)

In the darkening sky,
In ancient Rome,
Chased by his master,
The slave ran home.

The Old Man’s Night (internal rhyme)

One long rainy night, in an old man’s sight,
He saw something at his open door.
He said “Go away, or I’ll get you, I may!”
And the thing flew out into the moor.
“Well, it’s in the plains…oh my! My leg pains!”
The old man said in disgust,
And because of the rain his short metal cane
Was also stating to rust.

The Rain (eye rhyme)

One day a little boy
Was soaked by a sudden rain.
The next day when he went out to play
It started to rain again.

Once there was a boy, living in a town, and he ran so confidently and fast during races that everyone who saw him run would say, “Wow!” One day, in a racing tournament, he participated and raced into the finals. as soon as the starter gun fired, he and his three competitors took off. He was in first place neck-to-neck with another guy. 100 feet…50 feet…he was now in first place alone. 25 feet…10…15…10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0! He won the tournament for the 34th time, and felt great holding up the golden trophy.