Madeleine Musings

Madeleine musings:

MADELEINE: I wish I could raise a thousand dollars so I could buy a pool for school!
ME: A thousand dollars, huh?
MADELEINE: Yeah.  Then we could use it at PE.  And...maybe we could even use it at recess!

Okay, Madeleine, you get on that.  Anyone want to contribute to the $1000 elementary school pool fun?  I know it's a steep price to pay for a pool, but think of all the PE and recess uses it would get!


And speaking of school and PE, Madeleine is super excited for her bike rodeo tomorrow, in which all 3rd graders take a bike safety test in order to get a bike license.  This license then allows them to ride to and from school on their own.

MADELEINE: The BAD thing about tomorrow is that we don't have PE until the end of the day.
ME: Oh, so you have to wait all day?
MADELEINE: Yeah.  Maybe we can do a math lesson about bikes.  And maybe for Writing Workshop, we can WRITE about bikes.  And otherwise I'll just spend the day, like, PRETENDING to ride a bike without the bike.  Mommy.  Here's my BIKING IMPRESSION: (holding her hands on imaginary handlebars and marching her legs up and down.)  Vrrrrooooom!  Well.  Wait.  That's more like a car.
ME: Yeah, the sound is more like a car, but your motions do look like a bike!
MADELEINE: Yeah.  And here's my ONE-PEDAL biking: (moving only one foot up and down.)  Mommy.  It's like: "You've heard of a tricycle, now THIS is a...this is a...."
ME: A unicycle?
MADELEINE: A unicycle!  Wait.  Mommy.  A unicycle is just one wheel.  This is two wheels and only one pedal.
ME: Yeah, well a tricycle is not three pedals, it's three wheels.  So if you're comparing it to a tricycle-
MADELEINE: No, Mommy, this is two wheels, it's just one pedal.
ME: I understand.  I'm just saying if you're talking about a tricycle, that has three wheels, but not three pedals, so-
MADELEINE: No, but Mommy, I'm doing just one pedal.
ME: Right. 
MADELEINE: Okay.  How 'bout this. "You've heard of a bicycle, now here's a...MICYCLE!"

Okay.  Yes.  A one-pedaled bike is called a micycle.  Very clever.  Glad she understood my point that if she was comparing a one-pedaled bike to a tricycle she had the wrong analogy.  I hope someday Madeleine will earn a fortune on her new one-pedaled invention, the micycle.