Sitting on a park bench with my kids is usually an activity I have to force myself to do before I slowly get used to the situation. The kids run around and do daring things on climbing frames and swings.
Then it is snack time. Usually we have big sticky cookies and mineral water. Yesterday however we had croissants.
They broke open the croissants to discover the usual spaces and and holes in the bread.
The interesting thing for me was listening to their conversation. First they speculated about what could fill up the spaces. Chocolate kicked off the discussion, followed by other foodstuffs. Eventually they hit upon elephants.
The just four year old said the elephant would need to be very small to fit inside even the biggest space inside the croissant. She was clearly visualising and performing measuring activities in her mind and with her fingers.
By contrast the nearly seven year old was a lot more adventurous with his language and declared that you could fit a full sized elephant inside one of the spaces. Two different ages. Two different ways of dealing with ideas. Clearly the younger was more visual. The older more abstract because of his dexterity with words. I shall listen to them more carefully in future.
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