fun things kids say as first class attention grabbers

Tom Roeper roeper at linguist.umass.edu
Thu Aug 22 01:59:31 UTC 2013


Here's a few from my book Prism of Grammar (and from my children):

at 3yrs my son said, when he had a stomach ache:
    "there's a fire-engine in my stomach"

my daughter said one day:
     "My mind is very angry, and so am I"
when I asked my son why he is good at chess he said:
    "because I use my brain, instead of thinking"
or his first use of recursion:
    "I am not as tall as you as Mom"

These allow us to think a little bit,don't they---

Tom Roeper


On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Elena Nicoladis <elenan at ualberta.ca> wrote:

> My 3.5 French-English bilingual daughter announced one day (in English),
> "I have a spicy bum!"
>
> Took us hours to figure out that she meant that she meant that she had an
> itchy bum (spicy = piquant (Fr); piquer (Fr) = to itch).
>
> Elena
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 7:27 AM, Roberta Golinkoff <Roberta at udel.edu>wrote:
>
>> Great idea! Will you please share when you collect these?
>>
>> My grandchild looked down his mom's shirt at her cleavage and said, "That
>> a butt?" He had a gap that needed filling...
>>
>> Best, Roberta
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 10:44 PM, Bruno <brunilda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I like to use attention grabbers the first day of class in my language
>>> acquisition courses. I usually mention the fis phenomenon, McNeill and
>>> Braine on negative evidence, and some fun errors (for example from Erika
>>> Hoff's and Eve Clark's books, with attribution). Students laugh and become
>>> really interested in figuring out why kids say the darnedest things.
>>> I was wondering if somebody can share examples that can be used this way
>>> or if people have some favorite ones they use.
>>> Thanks all.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>> Bruno Estigarribia
>>> Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and
>>> Literatures
>>> Research Assistant Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science Program
>>> Affiliate Faculty, Global Studies
>>> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph. D.
>> Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor
>> School of Education and Departments of Psychology and Linguistics and
>> Cognitive Science
>> University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
>> Office: 302-831-1634; Fax: 302-831-4110
>> Web page: http://udel.edu/~roberta/
>> Author of "A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the
>> Evidence" (Oxford)
>>     http://www.mandateforplayfullearning.com/
>> Please check out our doctoral program at
>> http://www.udel.edu/education/graduate/index.html
>> The late Mary Dunn said, "Life is the time we have to learn."
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Elena Nicoladis
>
> "Since all the sciences, and especially psychology, are still immersed in
> such tremendous realms of the uncertain and the unknown, the best that any
> individual scientist, especially any psychologist, can do seems to be to
> follow his own gleam and his own bent, however inadequate they may be. In
> fact, I suppose that actually this is what we all do. In the end, the only
> sure criterion is to have fun."
> Edward Tolman
>
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-- 
Tom Roeper
Dept of Lingiustics
UMass South College
Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA
413 256 0390

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