Saturday, March 16, 2013

my future engineer

If you ask Jimmy what he wants to be when he grows up, he will probably hide from you or turn away and not saying anything.  But if I pressure him enough to give an answer, he will tell you he wants to be "a builder."  I don't know everything this entails, but in his mind he loves construction equipment and building Legos so "builder" probably sounds like a good job.  He is a pretty smart kid, but he is also very creative so I wouldn't be surprised if he was an engineer or architect... but no pressure.  On his first week of preschool his teacher was impressed with his Lego creations.
We recently read a book about the Wright Brothers and afterwords he wanted to play that we were them.  We pretended to fix bicycles for a bit and then he wanted to draw out our plans for our "Air Machine."  He copied a picture from the book with great detail.
Then we wanted to build it out something so I suggested Duplos (probably because I didn't want to get out all the Legos).
He also loves building Lincoln Logs, but he is a stickler for following the directions.
Sometimes I wish he would just let go and just make stuff up, but I am not really complaining. 
This last bit is something that completely blew Zach and I away.  He made up his own game when he was only four years old.   I helped a bit, but honestly the idea was all his own.  He drew a track on a piece of cardboard and drew multiple trains with different numbers of them.  He carefully cut them all out and then set them out of order on the board.  He used 6 bowling pins with numbers on them to be the controls.  Each pin corresponded with the train of the same number.  The idea of the game was to move all the trains onto different tracks until you got them into the correct numerical order.   I was like, "You thought of that?!"  That is like a real, legitamate, educational game.  We are in talks with Parker Brothers.
He has so many wonderful skills and a great imagination. I can't wait to watch it continue to grow.
Jimmy whatever you decide to be some day, I am sure I will be proud.  

1 comment:

  1. If you haven't read it yet - find a copy of "Cromwell Dixon's Sky Cycle" about a real life boy who built one of the first airplanes!

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