Reading words of the week 2

The first week went very well. We did some review at the end and J got them all right, though of course—as a little bit of randomized flash card work revealed—that was mostly because he had the words memorized in short order. Which is fine.

Here's week 2.

2.1 ist
2.2 bist 
2.3 der Mist 
2.4 die Kiste, die Kisten
2.5 die Liste, die Listen
2.6 die List, die Listen
2.7 listig

The latter half of this group is calculated to lead to the last word, which is an important one for a snake-friendly household. The snakes gathered as J did the honors:

Media today 63

Listening: Nina Weger, Kommando Känguru (Die sagenhafte Saubande 1), 21:30 - 35:30.

Total audio 2015: 11.40
Total video 2015: 14.00
Age 5.3.30

Media today 62

Reading: Nina Weger, Die sagenhafte Saubande. Kommando Känguru, 47-55.

Listening: Ingo Siegner, Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss und die Reise zum Nordpol, 0:00 - 30:30; Otfried Preußler, Die kleine Hexe, 1.50 - 2.08 (end). 

At J's request, this is our third time through the Kokosnuss story in less than a month. It takes the harmless narrative world of Hans de Beer's Little Polar Bear series and adds some Darwinian realism, to greatly humorous effect. Half the plot revolves around Björn the polar bear's craving for seal meat, which the three friends are very ambivalent about, and how things play out when they run into Rudi the seal.

There's a sweet spot at about 29:00 where Oskar, trying to buck Björn up in the face of his adversaries, two bully-bears named Keule and Beule, delivers the following bit of bluster:

"Ich habe eine Idee," sagt Oskar. "Wir gehen da jetzt hinaus, und dann kriegen diese beiden Gummibärchen aber so was von auf die Mütze, dass sie 'Alle meine Entchen' im Quadrat singen!"

That had J in stitches and he wanted me to replay it several times. Then he started threatening me: "Papa, wenn du das so weitermachst, kriegst du so was von auf die Mütze, dass du 'Alle meine Entchen' im Quadrat singst!"

I don't know what "im Quadrat singen" means. "As a quartet"? If any reader knows, please leave a comment!

Total audio 2015: 11:26
Total video 2015: 14:00
Age 5.3.29

Media today 61

Reading: Nina Weger, Die sagenhafte Saubande. Kommando Känguru, 40-47.

Listening: Nina Weger, Kommando Känguru (Die sagenhafte Saubande 1), 7:30-21:30.

Total audio 2015: 10.37
Total video 2015: 14:00
Age 5.3.28

Media today 60

Reading: Nina Weger, Die sagenhafte Saubande: Kommando Känguru, 28-40.

The experience with the audiobook yesterday made J positive about this book. One character who does not—or not yet—appear in the audiobook is the emotionally abusive tomcat who torments the main character. J got a lot of laughs out of the nasty things the tomcat says and does.

Age 5.3.27

Puppetry today 8

Today J wanted the piggies to help us make bread dough.

Thusnelda got a little flourdusty:

Media today 59

Reading: Nina Weger, Die sagenhafte Saubande. Kommando Känguru, 9-30.

Listening: Kommando Känguru (Die sagenhafte Saubande 1), 0:00-15:00.

Viewing: Die Sendung mit der Maus: Sachgeschichten, "Das Krankenhaus" (28:20); Die furchtlosen Vier, 0:00-42:00. 

The Weger book, which comes with a recommendation from a colleague and fellow German-kiddie-playgroup parent, is J's first real excursion into something more like "youth" than "children's" literature. I'm curious about whether he will like it. At first he didn't seem to and wanted me to stop, then changed his mind and asked me to keep going, and by the end of the chapter he seemed quite interested. We'll reinforce this reading with the audiobook later today. 

There's a good bit of slang and youth idiom in this book, for example Schiss haben = Angst haben. The way I deal with slang is the following: I lean in conspiratorially towards J, lower my voice, and tell him what the expression means, but that it is kind of impolite and that he should not go around using it and that he should definitely not let Thusnelda hear him using it or she will probably reprimand him. Friedel won't mind, however. 

We also encountered the word Wumpe here, in the expression Das ist mir Wumpe, which means Das ist mir egal. I had never heard this before; apparently it is pretty new on the scene. 

Wow, he really liked the audiobook. It's actually a "szenische Lesung" based on the book, and ends up compressing the introductory chapters. The voice actors are very talented; especially the poodles are very well done.

At 13:00 the poodles tell Mateo that he may end up in an insane asylum (Irrensanstalt) if grown-ups hear him talking to animals. J was very interested in what an Irrenanstalt is and bombarded me with questions: who goes there; if it's true, as the poodles say, that they "stuff you with pills" (dich mit Pillen vollstopfen) there; why pills; and if these kinds of places still exist. I told him that they do, though people are not kept there forcibly as much as they used to be, and that some people are mentally so ill that they have to be kept on medicine so that they stay calm and don't hurt themselves and others. He wanted to hear this section again.

Whew. About ready for this:

Total audio 2015: 10.23
Total video 2015: 14:00
Age 5.3.26

Das Brausewasserfabrikbauerschulsystem

One evening about two years ago I came up with the following Q & A at the dinner table both in order to amuse the boy and get him used to long German words. I held up my glass of fizzy, pointed to the bubbles, and asked something like the following:

A: Weißt du, was das ist? Das ist die Brause [sometimes der Sprudel]! Willst du wissen, wo die Brause herkommt?

J: Ja!

A: Die Brause kommt von dem Brausewasser! Willst du wissen, wo das Brausewasser herkommt?

J: Ja!

A: Das Brausewasser kommt aus der Brausewasserfabrik! Willst du wissen, wo die Brausewasserfabrik herkommt?

J: Ja! 

A: Die Brausewasserfabrik kommt von dem Brausewasserfabrikbauer! Willst du wissen, wo der Brausewasserfabrikbauer herkommt?

J: Ja!

A: Der Brausewasserfabrikbauer kommt aus der Brausewasserfabrikbauerschule! Willst du wissen, wo die Brausewasserfabrikbauerschule herkommt?

J: Ja! 

A: Die Brausewasserfabrikbauerschule ist ein Teil des Brausewasserfabrikbauerschulsystems!

In subsequent repetitions I would try to get J to start asking the questions. If I recall correctly, the last time we did it, more than a year ago now, he was able to ask into the third round (Wo kommt die Brausewasserfabrik her?). This evening he spontaneously started the game again, and made it into the fourth round (Wo kommt der Brausewasserfabrikbauer her?), albeit with some fumbling and a gender error or two. 

Media today 58

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt die Umwelt," 37:00-44:16 (end); Otfried Preußler, Die kleine Hexe, 59:30-1.50.

At 1.25 of Die kleine Hexe (the book chapter is called "Wollen wir wetten"), the little witch gets involved with a group of kids in the nearby town who are dressed up in costumes for Carnival/Fastnacht. This section does not come across well today, since the among the costumes are "an African," "a Chinamen," "various Orientals," and "an Indian," all hanging out with ... "a cannibal." 

The first time we read the story and listened to the Hörspiel, I made no comment, but this time I paused the story and explained at some length that these kinds of costumes are mostly not—and in my view should not be—worn anymore today because people from Africa and China and Asia, as well as Native Americans, find them offensive. When the author wrote the book more than 50 years ago (1957), there were not many people from these countries living in Germany, and so the Germans didn't know them very well and didn't realize they might be insulted, but that's not the case anymore.

The illustrations in the modern edition of the book does avoid the most offensive figures:

Germans' strange—and from my perspective rather distasteful—fascination with Native Americans is also something we've run into on numerous occasions. There's a Kokosnuss story with an Indian main character, the only one we haven't read. There's been a good bit of press about this lately.

Total audio 2015: 10:08

Total video 2015: 13:18

Age 5.3.24 

Reading words of the week 1

Already more than two years ago I got it into my head that I could start teaching J to read. That was a mistake, as I write about in my article. But now he is quite ready and willing. He has long since learned all his letters (upper-case very well, lower-case less so) and is just beginning to sound words out of his own accord.

I'm going to begin by adopting a very simple but elegant and low-stress technique suggested by a colleague of mine and fellow German-kiddie-playgroup dad, Jeremy Reynolds. Every morning at breakfast he gives his children a piece of paper with a German word on it, and they try to sound it out. 

I'm going to modify this slightly. If the word is a noun, then in the morning I'm going to write the singular form, and in the evening add the plural form (articles included). If it's a verb, then the infinitive comes in the morning, the past participle in the evening. Also, after J sounds the word out, he will write it down on the card, and I will leave a blank card after each word in anticipation of a later stage when he will practice writing the word after having seen it but while not currently looking right at it. 

I got a index card notebook for the purpose, 

5 X 8 so there's enough room for singular and plural forms of longer words and space for J to write them. 

The first word of the day is der Hund. Here's the morning exercise:

J was able to sound it out independently, but probably partly or mostly because he knew since last night what the word was going to be. I think I'll do this for awhile, then stop telling him ahead of time. 

Here's the evening excercise:

(At this point he was about to drop, exhausted from a birthday party in an indoor jungle room!) 

I'll do these entries by week. As for the choice of words, I'm just going to start simple and follow my nose, keeping some letters and letter combinations constant while changing others.

1.1 der Hund, die Hunde
1.2 die Hand, die Hände
1.3 der Mund, die Münder
1.4 das Band, die Bänder
1.5 das Land, die Länder
1.6 der Sand, die Sande
1.7 die Wand, die Wände

Puppets and piano practice 4: little breakthroughs

While Friedel's and Thusnelda's intervention has definitely helped, piano practice has continued to be a mixed bag, and sometimes the puppet preliminaries end up taking so much time and being so much of a focus that the piano loses out. 

The piggies have to get past J before they can play the piano.

It continues to be difficult for me to stay calm and patient, and at this point J feels that even Thusnelda is sometimes "too strict." My wife has suggested that J can now start practicing on his own, and yesterday under her aegis he actually did sit down and, for a few minutes, practice with concentration. She told me that as he finished, he looked up and beamed!

And this morning there was another little breakthrough. After noodling about on the keys a little, he got a piece of paper, announced he was going to write a song, and started drawing notes. 

"What is the song about?" I asked, since I heard him mumbling words. "About a snake, a sidewinder," he replied. He had a first verse in mind already: Die kleine Schlange schlängelt sich, but was hung up on the second part. I suggested du-u-urch die Wüste. He liked that. He finished the melody, hummed it to himself with the words,

Took the song to the piano and played through it, 

Then asked the piggies come and listen. We couldn't find Friedel, so he played the song for Thusnelda.

Here's the finished composition (he changed sich schlängeln to sich winden):

Die kleine Schlange windet sich / du-u-urch die Wüste

On our shopping trip afterwards he was already working on a second song. He proposed Die kleine Schlange frisst die Maus, die schluckt sie ... and then got hung up. I proposed die schluckt sie ganz herunter, which he liked. He wrote the music when he got home.

Media today 57

Reading: Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 33-34 (end).

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt die Umwelt," 34:00-37:00.

At 155 pages, Urmel aus dem Eis is the longest story I have yet read to J, and also the most difficult in terms of language. He did very well with it. His attention would wander at times, but when I asked him if he remembered what happened last time or where we were in the story, he almost always knew.

Total audio 2015: 10:01

Total video 2015: 12:27

Age 5.3.23 

Media today 55

Reading: Faith McNulty, How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World (sight translated); Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 31-32.

Viewing: Es war einmal das Leben, "Die Atmung" (26:00), "Das Herz" (26:25); "Das Gehirn" (26:37); FWU (Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht), "Die Atmung" (10:50).

The McNulty book is one I used to sight-translate to J about two years ago. I remember it being quite difficult back then, because I wasn't practiced in how to describe machines and mechanical-physical operations. Two years of reading, listening to, and watching "how things work"-type stuff with J has made it much easier.

We are close to the end of the Urmel story. We've decided that we won't read any more stories in the book for awhile, since the language is still rather too advanced. Here's what J said:

"Der Mensch, der dieses Buch geschrieben hat, macht viele Worte, wo die Leute nur so 'rumplappern!", at which he made his hands into mouths and them make blabbing motions while moving them up and down and going "Bla bla bla bla bla!" 

Apt description of the narrator's rather verbose style.   
Es war einmal das Leben is the German dub of a French animated series on how the body works. J has been watching it off and on for about two years. It's cute and quirky. Basically it's a voyage inside the body, where every physical process and phenomenon is anthropomorphized. Here are the red blood cells carrying oxygen: 

And here are the white blood cells, the "body police":

The only problem is that there is no narrator, and a lot of what's going on doesn't clearly emerge from the dialogue and is actually not that easy to figure out. J asks "What's going on here?" at every turn. I usually sit with him for at least one video and try to explain. 

By the way: This show was broadcast in 30 countries, but not in the US. If you watch just the opening sequence and how the bodies of the young people are represented, you get a sense of why not: 

 

This show is underwritten by a very different attitude toward sexuality than prevails in the United States. 

Total audio 2015: 9:58

Total video 2015: 12:27

Age 5.3.22 

Media today 54

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt die Umwelt," 23:00-34:00

Viewing: Alice im Wunderland, 0:00 - 24:00.

The audiobook had an awesome sweet spot at 28:55 where Albert explains what a chain reaction is and gives examples. J wanted to listen to this seven times and was befallen by the giggles. Here's the transcription of part of it:

So, ihr Denkologen, hier kommt jetzt eine Frage: Kennt ihr das Wort "Kettenreaktion"? Schon mal gehört, hmm? Wenn nicht, könntet ihr es mal auseinandernehmen, so ganz albertistisch, schlau und listig! "Kettenreaktion": Hmm hmm! Das ist ganz bestimmt nicht das, was passiert, wenn man beim Fahradfahren kräftig in die Pedale tritt. Dazu klingt "Kettenreaktion" doch zu ... wissenschaftlich, hmm? 

And this is the section that really had J in stitches:

Eine Reaktion ist etwas, das passiert, weil vorher etwas Anderes passiert ist. Wenn ihr ein Glas in die Hand nehmt und es fallen lasst, wird es am Boden zerspringen. Wenn ihr die Scherben dann liegen lasst, wird vielleicht jemand 'reintreten und sich verletzen. Wenn sich jemand mit einer Scherbe verletzt, wird er womöglich zum Arzt gehen. Habt ihr bemerkt, was geschehen ist? Glas: PENG! Scherbe: AUA! Arzt: SPRITZE! PFLASTER! ... und so weiter. 

Genius. This series really knows how to make science understandable and fun for children.

The Alice above is a German dub of the 1988 Burbank films version. It's quite delightful. J actually has more experience with Alice in German than in English, since it is not among my wife's favorites. 

The German translations are very good—generally very successful in terms of the punning and idiomatic wordplay—and available on kindle for free and in various cheap editions. It's also available in HTML. When I first started working on this story with J in German, I copied the text to a document file, edited it (not the whole thing, but numerous episodes) down to simple German, and then gradually started editing it back up towards the original translation. It's also available on audiobook. 

J's favorite denizen of Wonderland is, of course, the Cheshire Cat,

translated by Antonie Zimmermann as "Grinsekatze," which is just fabulous.  

Unfortunately, Alice hinter den Spiegeln (Through the Looking Glass), while available as a book and e-book, is not available as an audiobook.

Total audio 2015: 9:58

Total video 2015: 10:58

Age 5.3.21 

Media today 53

Reading: Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 30; A.A. Milne, Pu der Bär. Gesamtausgabe, 147-148 ("Anxious Pooh Song"/"Besorgtes Pu-Lied"), 253 (scene from "Pooh-Sticks"/"Pu-Stöcke").

Pooh is one of J's (and my wife's) great favorites and he knows whole stories & chapters practically by heart. 

Since there's so much idiomatic language-play, not all of it comes across well in German translation (the above song for example), but nonetheless J really enjoys it and it's great language practice because, since he already knows the stories so well, the meandering, rather complex and periodic sentences are no problem and he gets accustomed to that level of discourse in German. 

Age 5.3.20

Media today 52

Reading: David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, 188-189 (telescopes), 191 (microscopes), 194 (lasers).

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt die Umwelt" (0:00 - 23:00) 

Viewing: Siebenstein, episode 236, "Rudi und die süße Lina" (22:00); Benjamin Blümchen, "Benjamin Blümchen als Lokomotivführer" (26:00); Janoschs Traumstunde, "Das schöne Leben des Hasen Robinson" (0:00 - 13:00)

When I was reading to J about lasers J pointed to the images and asked, "Ist das ein Schießlaser?" (Is that a shooting-laser?). I thought that was cute, and idiomatically expressed. 

Total L2 audio 2015: 9:47
Total L2 video 2015: 10:34
Age 5.3.19

Puppet walks

Today we took a long walk at Sandy Creek nature center with Friedel and Thusnelda. 

J always does a lot of talking on our walks, but today with the piggies along he was especially excited about showing and explaining all his favorite things. I really focused on working second person informal plural forms today (ihr / euch / euer / eurig ). Since I've consciously stressed them for years, J's usage is generally very good in this regard, especially in short sentences in the nominative case and in the interrogative and imperative moods. But he still has trouble and hesitates with the oblique cases and the adjectival forms. Today I modeled a lot of sustained discourse with the piggies with as many forms of the relevant pronouns as I could pack in. By the end of the walk he was getting out sentences with forms in several cases correctly and smoothy-naturally. 

Media today 51

Reading: David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, 186-187 (lenses), 190 (binoculars), 200-201 (film cameras). 

Age 5.3.18

Literary-critical Sunday school, part 8

Reading: The Beginner's Bible, 473-508 (end).

Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, part 2, 40:27-52:30 (end); Karlheinz Koinegg, Moses und die Wüste der Wunder, 51:14-1:28:45.

At this point, we have covered both the main narratives of both the Old (focusing on the Torah) and New Testaments. Next time we'll start picking up some of the later and minor OT stories we have skipped—Joshua, several stories from Judges, Ruth, and stories from the prophets other than Jonah. 

After finishing the reading we were looking at the cover of the book and J noticed something interesting:

The little boy with the sling is obviously David, which makes the big soldier-looking guy standing behind him Goliath. J found it funny that Goliath "looks nice and friendly" here, even though in the story they are enemies and David kills him. This bible is definitely what in German would be called verharmlosend, steering clear of anything controversial.  

Not so the other stories. The dangers of non-majority belief were a common theme in both the Moses story and the sections from Käsmann today. The Moses story fleshes out the religion of the Egyptians (including a priest who is Moses's teacher while he is growing up in the court of the Pharaoh) and contains numerous episodes where the Egyptians are scandalized by the religious beliefs of the Hebrews. The Käsmann audiobook contains the story of Stephan's martyrdom, which the narrator comments: "It was dangerous to believe in Jesus." 

J chimed in here an asked what that meant, leading to a fairly long conversation about how many people who are very religious get very upset when people don't believe the same things they do, and sometimes they treat those people very badly and persecute them (I explained what verfolgen meant, a word used by both audiobooks). 

Apropos of which: Now that the Judeo-Christian "foundation" is in place, I'm going to start systematically exploring other religious beliefs and traditions with J. The Ich weiß was audiobook series has what looks like an excellent place to begin:

Also this morning, life met literature in a serendipitous way. On several occasions over the years, I have made explicit references to New Testament stories when giving money to indigent people while J is with me. I don't make such references every time, because I don't want J to get the impression that I give money to the poor simply because the bible tells us to, but rather because it is the right thing to do just because. However, I do it sometimes because I want J to understand that even though I don't "believe" a lot of what's in the bible, nonetheless it—especially the New Testament—has a lot of true and important things to say about how people should live and treat each other.  

So this morning we read and heard versions of the story from Acts 3:-10 where Peter and John heal the lame man begging in front of the temple. It happened that there was an indigent man asking for money on the street outside of the doughnut shop where we were. I made J aware of the connection between the bible story and our reality, and then I told him that whereas Peter and John didn't have money to give the man but could heal him instead, we of course can't heal him (nor did he seem ill), but we can give him some money. So we went and got some cash out of an ATM and gave it to him. "Ich mag, dass du das getan hast, Papa!" said J.  

Total audio 2015: 9:24
Total video 2015: 9:33

Media today 50

Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 27-29.

Age 5.3.18

Media today 49

Listening: Ich weiß was, "Albert E. erklärt Musikinstrumente," 28:30-52:00 (end); Otfried Preußler, Die kleine Hexe (Hörspiel), 48:00-59:30 

Viewing, "Hänsel und Gretel" (children's song); Let's Play Kung Fu Panda, Episode 3 (24:17) and 5 (23:33)

Total audio 2015: 8:35
Total video 2015: 9:33
Age 5.3.15

Media today 48

Reading: Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 25-26; David Macaulay, Das große Mammut-Buch der Technik, 252-253 (Raumsonden).

Age 5.3.14

Language log from the first two and a half years of L2

As I write in my article, during the first two and a half years I did not keep detailed notes on my son's progress in the L2. In a theoretical sense I wish I had, but the problem was that teaching him the language took so much time and energy that I had none left over for recording what we did that day and what my son accomplished. If I had done that, I would not have gotten any other research done.

But I did note things down occasionally. So what I'm going to do now is go back through my records and note on this blog what J said in German on the date I recorded it. You can find those records under the dates to the right.

Code switching and Denglish 1

All in all Jamie is very good at not mixing languages, but of course he does so occasionally. I'm going to post the occasional entry where I accumulate examples over the course of a couple of weeks, to the extent I can recall them.

Papa, kannst du das Video aufbäcken? ("back it up")

Also, J occasionally still will use "if" for German "wenn" in a conditional sentence. He was doing it a good bit up until a year or so ago, now much less often. Today (1.15.15) I heard it when trying to express himself while very upset.

"I do that better as [< als] Grammy." (overheard by my wife several times)

Media today 47

Reading: Max Kruse, Urmel aus dem Eis, ch. 23-24; Roger Hargreaves, Mister Sorge.

Listening: Ich weiß was, Albert E. erklärt Musikinstrumente, 0:00-28:30; Otfried Preußler, Die kleine Hexe (Hörspiel), 0:00-48:00

Viewing: Kung Fu Panda, Die Geheimnisse der Meister (22:05); Ratatouille video game (1:30); Lauras Stern, "Kätzchen in Not" (11:26).

Unlike the Kung Fu Panda video game, this video game film doesn't feature the recorded voices of the players, but only in game dialogue, which is however still pretty substantial. 

Like many video games, this one is all about accomplishing tasks. So every few minutes I've been walking into the living room and asking variations on the question Was ist der Auftrag, den Remy jetzt erledigen muss? J has been giving good explanations: Er muss an das [sic] blöde Huhn vorbei; Jetzt muss er seiner Familie folgen, er muss über diesen Baumstamm 'rüberspringen und dann den da 'runterrutschen; Siehst du diese Sterne da oben? Er muss da hinauf und die holen; Er muss bei [sic] diesem Hund vorbei. (In subsequent explanations he was getting an + dative vorbei correct). Siehst du diese blauen [sic; he's been nailing this adjective ending pretty consistently for the past several months] Strahlen? Das ist eine andere Ratte. 

I've also been using gelingen / misslingen and trying to get him to give me answers in the dative. He does a good bit of the time.

The combination of Lauras Stern being about human children as opposed to animals and, into the bargain, with a girl instead of a boy main character means that this is not among J's favorite videos. But these are also precisely the reasons I obligate him to watch it sometimes. And when he does he usually enjoys it and gets a good bit out of it. 

Apps: During his tablet time this afternoon I saw/heard J listening to some bible apps and using the Philipp Buchklub app Schulstart.

Total audio 2015: 8:00
Total video 2015: 8:42
Age  5.3.12

Media today 46

Reading: Roger Hargreaves, Mister Krach; Julia Donaldson, Für Hund und Katz ist auch noch Platz

Age 5.3.11

Media today 45

Reading: Roger Hargreaves, Mister Dämlich, Mister Aua, and Mister Groß. 

Age 5.3.10

Cute things J says 1

"Ich kann nicht sehr gut mit Metall künstlern, aber ich kann ziemlich gut mit Zeichnen künstlern."

Roughly: "I can't artistify very good with metal, but I can artistify pretty good with drawing."

The comment about metal artistry has to do with our bike rides around Athens, where there is a lot of metal sculpture on view. Here are some of our favorites:

Gotta look closely for this next one:

We "talk" to these big insects alot. J really likes praying mantises.