Jack's college education classes began when he was 3-years old. Initially, we started with a couple of famous paintings. However, over the past year, his learning has mushroomed into his knowing 4 to 5 dozen paintings and the name of the artist.

In the past couple of months, his class morphed into literature. Jack is getting to know and appreciate A. A. Milne's writing about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Jack is reviewing what Christopher Robin told Winnie to promise him.

Then we reviewed the lesson on Dreadnoughtus. This picture is from that classroom lecture several weeks ago. During that class, Owen decided to audit the class, like Steve Jobs did when he dropped out of college and dropped into learning. Owen wanted me to hold him while he held his favorite car during my two-hour lecture about the dreadnoughts and their ancient predecessor, the Dreadnoughtus.

After the review of those past lessons, Jack begins learning about dragonflies. I printed several pictures from the Internet of dragonflies. Since both of us like the color blue, I picked a blue dragonfly as an illustration. Jack began comparing his dragonfly with the picture of the blue dragonfly. I had found his dragonfly in my driveway while cutting the grass. Apparently, the dragonfly died of old age. Perhaps when he was younger, he was blue also.

Jack pretends that dragonfly will land on his finger.

Now, Jack is pretending to fly around the table of his family room.

He wants to point out the dragonflies large eyes.

He is showing just how big the dragonfly was.

Jack likes playing with his pet dragonfly. He just asked me whether we could call his dragonfly, Dave. I then showed Jack a picture of a very old fossil of a dragonfly that could have been around at the time of Dreadnoughtus, which Jack knows to be the largest dinosaur ever found.

A fossil of a dragonfly

Jack and Owen love throwing rocks into the lake behind my house. We have done that every time they visit. Several weeks ago, I was cleaning up that area and by sheer chance or good luck, I found a fossil of several small shells in a rock. Jack is exploring that fossilized rock with the shells.

Jack then compares the fossilized shells with some seashells that I brought to class and to those in his collegiate study guide.

If Jack is excited about dragonflies and shells, wait until he learns about trilobites.

11/03/14