Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

LOL. It reminds me of the phase my DD (4 at the time) had where she kept presenting DW and I with scribbled sheets of paper and declaring, "This is a contract. You HAVE to sign this contract!" We never did sign, because we suspected it was unreadable on purpose, and there was always a lot of white space for things to be added later.

mountainmom2011's post reminded me of this one time when my 2yr5mo daughter and I were at the Library info desk and I was asking the librarian to look up a book on her computer which she said she could not find. My daughter interrupted and said," If you cannot find it, let us go look for it." LOL.
Another funny event I was reminded of after reading Dude's post was when I was getting ready to go overnight for a conference and my daughter pleaded with me not to leave her and go. I said," But I am presenting". She said," Mom, I will give you presents." I said," But I am going to be on TV." She said," Oh, come on, mom! Be on TV at home." LOL. She was 2 yr 7 mo when this happened. She cracks me up for sure.

DS2.5 had his play tools out and was banging on some boards. I came to see what he was doing and he told me with a serious little face, "I'm working, Mama, I can't play with you. Go play by yourself."

I overheard a conversation my 5 year old son was having with another kid while waiting in line to get into preschool class. They were arguing about how many seconds it would take to do something (I forget what). The other kid says it will take 4 minutes. My son replies immediately, "No way, that would be 240 seconds!"

My brother who's a 6th grade math teacher came to visit this weekend and likes to quiz him. He asked him what -12 + 9 is and he answered correctly. I had no idea he even knew about negative numbers. He then went on to teach him exponents.

Your brother is amazing! Wolf was doing negative math on his own at 3 or 4. Amazing what they figure out isn't it?

My dd10 heard a song at a talent show that she liked on Friday called "The Show" by Lenka. She bought an iTunes card on Sunday, found wifi to download the song on her iPod and learned all the words. On Monday, after homework and school and ballet, she taught herself some of the piano. On Tuesday, she asked grandpa to come over after school, homework, ballet class, and a softball game to show her the piano parts she didn't get. She watched him figure out the song and on Wednesday she could play and song together with all the chord changes in perfect rhythm and time and she sounds great! She has never taken voice and only took piano for a year when she was six. But iT was mostly just reading music.
I am so proud of her skill, but mostly I am proud she has found something she could follow through on! Yay music! Funny. She was the one who asked to quit the piano lessons!

DS3 demanded to know why people can drown in water when it has oxygen in it. I explained lungs and gills a bit, but it was hairy, I don't really "get" this stuff yet chem still escapes me, generally. Fast forward to breakfast time. Long conversation about why you can't/shouldn't put out a gas stove fire with water, Canada's eternal flame comes into it, then that weird gas vent with the river on top. Finally, the child appears satisfied... Now immagine a breathless mama thankful for a break in the questions. Wait for it...

DS: "Mama, how do[es] water put out fire if it has oxygen in it?"

Mama: crash. and. burn.

I never even thought about that.

So, I guess I'm bragging that my three year old broke me before breakfast hit the table

That's hilarious, Michaela!

(So why can't you put out a gas fire with water?)

Lol, donchajustlove conversations like that that go into areas you're not comfortable with? Our last one was about the European debt crisis and what money really is... I know I read a book once about M0 and M1 and so on, but I definitely wasn't comfortable trying to explain it to DS and he wasn't letting go!

I can answer yours, though, in case you haven't looked it up since! Fish etc. breathing through gills is nothing to do with the oxygen that's chemically in the water as H2O - that stays right where it is. The fish are breathing the gaseous oxygen (from the air and from plants) that is dissolved in the water, which is an unrelated thing. This is why fish die if something happens that means the water no longer carries the usual amount of dissolved oxygen, e.g., it's why if you keep fish you need to either have water plants in the tank with them or aerate the water. Similarly, water doesn't dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen because of heat alone, so it doesn't do so when you use it to put out a fire. I bet your DS would enjoy seeing an electrolysis experiment some time soon, though...

That's a great story! Your kid is really thinking hard.

The reason that water puts out many (not all) fires is that it cools the fuel below the temperature needed to maintain the combustion reaction, and most common fuels do not have an exothermic chemical reaction with the water. While there is a small amount of molecular oxygen dissolved in most water, the bulk of the oxygen is already "burned", chemically combined with hydrogen. The fuel would have to be able to break the chemical bond between the hydrogen and the oxygen in order to re-use the chemically-bound oxygen in water for combustion.

Not all chemical reactions that generate heat and light (the sorts of things we like to think of as "fires") require oxygen. Magnesium is a great example of a fuel source that can burn under a multitude of circumstances (under water, in a pure nitrogen atmosphere, etc.), which would extinguish most other fires.