A Metaphorical Lesson.

Abigail has recently discovered Ted Ed and has been working her way through lots of sciency lessons. She now knows the best way to get ketchup to pour from a bottle, why chillies make your mouth feel like it's on fire, and how a computer works.

This week we've moved on to a lesson on metaphors.



What do you think? Some of it was a little beyond Abigail's ability, but the visuals really helped her take some new concepts on board. At 6, she's still very literal (the answer to my recent 'play your cards right' was a forlorn 'but I don't HAVE any cards') so this as nicely placed to introduce the idea of 'saying what is not true to describe what is true'.

There is space to Dig Deeper on the Ted Ed site, but I wanted to link in with a book that we already had in the house: Elephant Dance.

Elephant Dance is the story of Ravi, who is listening to some of his Grandfather's stories from India, using lots of metaphorical description. Ice cream mountains, tiger suns, and curtains of rain; the descriptions are all big and exotic, perfect to capture little minds. There are also pages of facts about life in India to come back to, but today we were concerned with all the metaphors dripping off the pages. I've tasked Abigail to to describe her world, using her new-found skills of metaphor. She's working om it now, and I'm quite sure it will come back marvellously illustrated.

You might also like The Barefoot Book of Classic Poetry, which is packed full of the finest poetry which takes you on a journey from birth to death, and lots in between. If you give describing your world in metaphors a go, I'd love to hear what you came up with.