Pestle, Mortar, and Bananagrams

This morning, Julian was at the kitchen table playing with his Bananagrams. Sidenote- If you don't know about Bananagrams check them out on Amazon. It is a fast and fun word game that is totally portable. All you need is a table to play it on. If you like Scrabble, you will love this game. This is a perfect gift idea for the young spellers in your family for Christmas. Anyways, when JJ was done using all of his letters to make words, he told Scott and me. We both went over to take a look at what words he had come up with this time. Normally, one of us plays the game with him. This morning he just chose to play on his own as we were all getting ready for our day. We found the words pestle and mortar within this particular crossword he had created. Scott read the word pestle out loud and we both looked at each other puzzled. Scott called Julian over and he asked him about the word pestle. Julian spit out a definition and said he would show us in a dictionary. He told us that he has read that word several times in his books. Scott and I giggled a bit and waited, sure enough he was right. Here is what we learned - A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix substances. The pestle is a heavy bat shaped stick whose end is used for pounding and grinding, and the mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, marble, clay, or stone (wikipedia) Would you believe that within the same tiles he had lined up within his game, he also had the word mortar spelled out as well. Yep, I didn't really know what that was either. I had seen this tool before, but never knew what it was called.

I am not at all surprised that my nine year old super reader of a son would know words that I don't. He reads constantly and this is just a great example of some of the fruit that comes from having a love for the written word.

Thanks for the lesson in vocabulary today, Jules. At the end of each day, I feel like I am the one that has had the most lessons learned. My kids teach me so much.