Lessons Learned With a Four-Year-Old

I continue to enjoy my time with our four year old grandson. We are learning together. One of the things that strikes me is that although he can’t go to school in person, go to the playground or play with his friends, he has handled himself amazingly well during the pandemic isolation. He gets enthusiastic about so many different topics. In addition to planets, dinosaurs, trucks and blocks, he has become interested in flowers. Each weekday when he comes over to our house, he asks to go on a tour of the flowers in our yard. Whenever he spots a new rose bud, he shouts for me to come see it. There’s a tree growing in the planter in our backyard. We have no clue what it is, but it’s tall and skinny. Our grandson calls it a palm tree and gets excited every day at how tall it’s growing. He’s an inspiration to me: his enthusiasm and his desire to soak up new learning.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old (redux)

My grandson and I had an interesting conversation recently. He had received a packet of material for his Zoom pre-school that included punch-outs of the planets in the solar system, one of his favorite topics. The circle for Uranus was smaller than the circle for Neptune. In a discussion about the size of planets, he stated that Neptune was larger than Uranus. I told him that my recollection was that Uranus was the larger of the two. He became very insistent that he was right and I was wrong by pointing to the size of the punched out circles. We then went on the Internet to settle the debate. I also reminded him that when we did the planet walk at the El Dorado park, the written description accompanying the sidewalk image of the planets stated that Uranus was four times the size of Earth and Neptune was slightly less than four times the size of Earth. What we finally concluded from our research was that Uranus was slightly larger in size but Neptune was heavier. I was proud that after reading several credible sources together, he changed his viewpoint. He then told me that his teacher was wrong. I said she wasn’t wrong, but the company that made the punch-outs had not scaled the circles to the respective sizes. As another example, the circle for Mars was the same size as the one for Earth and he knew that Mars was smaller. All in all an informative discussion for both of us.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old (continued)

I continue  to learn new things along with my 4-year-old grandson. He’s very interested in the solar system. He knows all the planets, and together we visit a sidewalk in El Dorado Park, Long Beach, where we walk from the sun to Neptune in a scale representation of one foot being a million miles. Here he is with Saturn:

 We’ve also learned together about dwarf planets. He’s particularly intrigued that Pluto got demoted from a regular planet to a dwarf planet. Other large dwarf planets are Eris, Ceres, Makemake and Haumea. Our favorite is Makemake. It makes a great chant.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old

I’ve not been bored during the stay-at-home period. The reason: my wife and I take care of our four-year-old grandson every weekday while his parents work. His preschool got cancelled in March, but he now meets with his teacher on Zoom three mornings a week for an hour or so to practice reading, writing, arithmetic and geography. What I have particularly enjoyed is his insatiable curiosity and the fascinating questions he asks. One major area of his interest lately has been large sea creatures. One topic has been whales with a focus on blue whales since they are the largest. He also heard about the megaladon, an ancient large shark. Together we do research on the Internet to answer his questions. I may not have all the answers, but I can find them. At the beach last week, he found a whale-shaped rock. This is now a prominent part of his rock collection.  

Reactions to Health Directives

Once again, our country seems locked into polarized reactions to something that should not be controversial. In this case, it’s health directives. Suddenly, wearing a face mask or not becomes a political statement.

One side says wearing a mask is important for protecting the health of everyone, and the other side says it’s not needed and don’t want to be told to do it.

I’ve heard the statement to act like we have the virus (wear a face mask to protect others) and act like we don’t have the virus (social distance, wash hands, etc.) to protect ourselves. This is what I’m trying to do

Author Events

Needless to say, it’s challenging to have author events currently. My last event was one day of the Left Coast Crime Conference in March. Since then, all events I was scheduled to participate in through May have been cancelled. I have one presentation still on my calendar for June, but doubt that it will take place. I enjoy the opportunity to meet with readers, give presentations and mingle with other writers. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be possible for the near term. I have spoken with book groups on conference and Skype calls and may do more of these in the future. We’ll see how things unfold.

What I’ve Learned During the Coronavirus Pandemic

This has been a tough time for all of us. As someone in the at-risk age group, I’ve stayed at home except to go to the food store and take occasional walks. Along the way I’ve learned a number of lessons:

1.      It’s hard to give up old habits. Just before the stay-at-home began, I was doing a speaking event at a library. I had promised myself I would not shake hands with anyone. When I arrived and the librarian greeted me, my first reaction was to stick out my hand. Then I said whoops and pulled it back. After attending one day of the Left Coast Crime Conference before it was cancelled, I had adapted to not shaking hands. It is now a permanent part of my behavior.

2.      Boredom is a challenge to many people stuck at home but it can be dealt with. I thought I would be bored but fortunately it has been the opposite. My wife and I take care of our 4-yeart-old grandson on weekdays while his parents work. This is a full time job and has kept me hopping with Zoom preschool calls for him, playing and inventing new games, reading, doing puzzles, building block creations, using sidewalk chalk. By the end of the day when his parents pick him up, I am tired and have had lots of exercise. We have a break on weekends, and I recharge with reading, walking and napping. During this stay-at-home time, I also wrote and self-published a story titled, Coronavirus Daze about a boy keeping a journal during the pandemic and making an amazing discovery. I have not been bored after the first few days of having to give up pickleball and other activities.

3.      People have different reactions to the pandemic. My son who works in a hospital instilled in me early-on the necessity to stay at home for our protection but also to help flatten the curve because he knew hospitals could be overwhelmed if we allowed the cases to rise too quickly. Other people have the reaction that it’s not going to happen to them and even if they get sick it won’t be very serious.

4.      The pandemic has led to a debate of health versus the economy. Both are important. We need to protect our citizens and have sensible policies and over time we need to take intelligent and planned steps to restart the economy.

5.      We’re all in this together. The pandemic has reinforced the interconnectivity of the world, our local communities and our families. At all levels it provides challenges that we need to think through and address.

Stay healthy.