Broken patella

Don't worry................no broken bones in our house. I just had to share a funny little story. We have been studying the human body and, in particular, the skeleton, in my Montessori preschool classroom over the past few weeks. My youngest son is a student in my classroom. On Monday, he fell on the sidewalk running out to the bus after preschool. He was in tears and had scraped his knee slightly. Later that night, he was sitting on a chair eating dinner and announced to me,

"Mommy, I think I bwoke my patewuh (patella) when I fell today." I assured him his patella was not, in fact, broken. The skin covering his patella was just scraped. However, inside I was doing a silent cheer because he had remembered the correct name of the kneecap. I am continally amazed at the capacity young children have for learning vocabulary. They are truly only limited by what they are exposed to. That is one of many reasons that I adore teaching preschoolers. If you want to read more about our study of the skeleton, read this post on my other blog.