Dinosaurs Boy and the collection of facts

Jack has become quite an expert on dinosaurs. He reads about them, memorizes facts about each dinosaur, its era, and its relationship to others of the same era.
I have no idea of the accuracy of his facts, because, I am embarrassed to admit, I couldn't care less about dinosaurs. For his sake, I wish I could -- but I have tried and the details simply won't stick. Probably because I am too lazy to really invest the effort required.

Rod, on the other hand, while he doesn't really care much more about dinosaurs than I do, has managed to memorize enough to assure me that Jack is right in most cases. (And to remind Jack when he gets one wrong.)

I am very pleased to see Jack making the effort, and while I can't really get enthused about dinosaurs, I encourage him ... and I am observing what seems to work for him as learning tools. He has plastic models of dinosaurs, flash cards, and encyclopedias of dinosaurs. He seems to really use them all together, and he plays out scenarios of carnivores attacking -- and also of herbivores defending themselves. (I am amused to note that in Jack's Dinosaur Park, herbivores usually win.)

Anyway, Jack has been almost as fascinated by the Thornton Burgess Animal Book -- which is a story book, but it contains a lot of the same sorts of details about the animals as Jack is memorizing about dinosaurs. When we got to the order carnivora, he was hooked! he knew that word and what it said about members of that order!

When he got excited, I saw my chance to expand on the talents he's developing!

Jack and I have started work on a series of lap books and flash cards about animals that feature in his favorite stories. He adores Wind in the Willows, so we started with water rat, mole, badger and toad. He loves Frog and Toad, so there's frog. And so on. Jack tells me what animals to add and we use the burgess book and wikipedia (and any other page on which we can find the information we need) to collect a whole lot of details on each animal. Order, species, size, diet, etc.
I am printing the flash cards on card stock from my scrapbooking collection, but I need to run out and find a cheap laminator so they will be sturdy enough to be carried everywhere while he's memorizing them. I am also working on getting better with lining up the right picture on the back of the detail page and getting them centered correctly. So far it's worked better to glue the picture on.

So far, as much as he likes to read, Jack seems to be the most proud of "being a scientist" -- and my friend Shelley pointed out that an important message to give kids is that adults don't know everything about everything, either. They, too, can grow up to be scientists who will add to the store of human knowledge. Hey, it seems to have worked -- her oldest daughter is the recently acclaimed Margaret Bakewell. Go ahead -- Google her! *grin*

Anyway, we've been more conscious of giving Jack that message since she mentioned it -- and he really does seem to be fired up by the idea. He's quite clear, though, that children can't be scientists -- an idea we disagree with at every opportunity. We agree that child scientists are unlikely to discover anything no one knew before, but practicing science as a child would seem to be the only way anyone ever did discover anything new as an adult!

You know -- I love homeschooling!