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Using non-literal sources with a literal child
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Hello! My 7yo 2nd grade son is a VERY literal child….we jokingly call him Amelia Bedelia. He is the child that defied all the advice for early learning. “Oh, you just bake cookies & count the chocolate chips and they learn counting!! SO easy!” Yeah….not him! He would never have learned to count that way. He needed this: “1…2…3…4…5. These are called numbers. We use numbers for counting things. You say them now!” (and eventually moved on to applying that knowledge to objects.) We started out using a mental math approach with him, but it became clear that he needed a very straightforward traditional math, which we have since found and moved to. Just a little background ?
What I’m wondering about is, with a child like this, how do we go about learning from non-literal sources? Example- we are reading Viking Adventure right now. My goal is that he comes away with an impression of what it would have been like to grow up as a Viking boy, along with some knowledge of the culture/time period. But I’m not exactly sure how to get from it being just a story that didn’t actually happen, to learning something about Vikings. Same with science- we are finishing 106 Days. We are reading Buster Bear right now. But there seems to be some (subconscious?) distinction for him between factual material & fiction. His grandparents bought him a Ranger Rick Jr. subscription, and he devours those things. We can mention some random animal, and he tells us all about it, unasked. “How do you know that?!?!?” we say. “Oh, I read it in one of my magazines.” Of course they are very direct & fact-based. Buster Bear is not. But the literary quality of Buster Bear FAR outweighs the twaddle that is Ranger Rick & others like it, which we generally try to avoid.
So while I don’t want to make these readings focused on recalling facts, I DO want him to come away having learned something about the subject we are studying. Any advice on how to do that when using books that don’t directly present the material to be learned?
I am probably no help but I think I would just continue reading from excellent sources and let him make the connections in his own time, even if it takes years. Hopefully one day he will read a factual book on vikings and then it will click. He may just consider it a made up story for now, but in the future it will all come together and he will have an Aha moment. Hopefully you will be in the room to see that moment! He is still really young, I bet he will just figure it out all on his own.
No advice, but my son is the exact same way, so you’re not alone! We saw an episode of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” (groan!) years ago where the characters were all in boxes saying things like “I’m riding a space ship!”, “I’m in a firetruck!” Then there’s the owl character and he just blankly stares at them and says “But… That’s a box.” And they can’t get him to see that they can be imagined as cars, trucks, space ships, the jungle, etc. That’s how my son is. LOL!
My son is the exact same way. Here’s a classic example: one day he was working on his math. I had to leave the room for a minute. I come back in to see my son with his foot on the desj, with a ruler next to it. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, “Well the question asked ‘How many inches in one foot?'”
He too struggles with abstract. In all honesty I do keep our reading for learning more literal just to make it easier for him. Thornton Burgess books are great living books, but they don’t work for us. Does he enjoy them? Yes. Does he take away facts from them? No. So we still read them to expose him, but I work with him where he’s at.
hahaha- I am laughing at that “how many inches in one foot”! That sounds just like something my boy would do! (Though it is interesting that he has NO problem with using his imagination. He plays imaginatively a lot, though he does know it isn’t real. But again- it’s those distinctions he’s formed somehow!) It’s not something I’m stressing about, and maybe eventually he’ll make connections, but I also don’t want to waste years and years (and money) trying to use primarily these types of books as our school material and him never learn anything from it. I don’t think it’s a matter of readiness…I think it’s just his learning style/personality. Are there any ways I can encourage him to look for “facts” without completely digesting the stories for him? I try to point out before we start a new book/section/whatever (as he is so literal!) that even though it is a good story, the reason we’re reading this book is so we can learn more about bears, so be listening for things it is telling us about them. And then I have him narrate along the lines of “Tell me some of the things you learned about bears from this chapter”. Am I doing it right?
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