My Jaw Dropped. Twice.

Putting Audrey in daycare/preschool full-time was a difficult decision for us.  I loved being home with her and knew I'd miss her, but I also had some reservations about the educational side of commercial childcare.  Well, those fears have been put aside.  A big shout-out goes to our local Kindercare, as I continue to be impressed and sometimes in shock at the things Audrey has learned there.  For example, yesterday, two things came out that I (possibly naively?) wouldn't expect to hear from a 4 year old.

1)  I got to pick her up from school, which is slightly unusual.  She was playing computer games (her favorite thing lately) when I arrived, and was greeted with a big running hug.  Running hugs are the new currency in our family.  We gathered her things, which included two crudely cut construction paper shapes, a blue square and a red rectangle.  Pretty innocent, right?  On the ride home, she kept putting them flat on her hand and telling me they were "plain shapes".  I thought she meant plain as in unadorned, boring, simple.  As I looked through her papers once we got home, I realized they had studied planes in her math class (geometry block right now).  I looked her and said, "Audrey, you meant plane as in flat, not boring!"  She smiled and smirked and looked at me like "Duh, mom".

2) After dinner, James was going through a magazine with her, full of puzzles and questions and mazes.  One question was something about which planet is bigger, Jupiter or Earth?  Well, Little Miss went on and on about how "the sun is on the end, then there are planets going out, and the planets far from the sun are super cold so we can't live there.  The planets close are super hot so we can't live there either, but Earth is just right in the middle so we're happy here".  I think as she was explaining all this, my jaw hit the butcher block table we were all bellied up against.  James was either watching Audrey in awe or laughing at me picking up my chin, trying to reunite it with the rest of my face.  It's amazing and wonderful to hear her spout out these things, as easily as if she were telling us what color her pants are that day or what her favorite stuffed animal is.  She gets animated and excited, hands waving, eyes darting, face lit with the excitement of sharing what she knows.