Eddie's Tornado Project

Eddie needed to do a project for school about the weather. Always tending toward the dramatic (as I suppose most eight-year olds are), Eddie chose to do a project on Tornado Safety. We went online and found several interesting photos and figures from the NOAA web site. They have PDF downloadable coloring books, from which we lifted several key tornado safety images. Eddie arranged them all, colored them, and posted them on his posterboard. He had also made a tornado diorama with Mom that looked really smashing. (No pun intended.) Hopefully, he will get good marks on the project.

The project has gotten him really interested in the weather. When Eddie gets interested in something, he really dives deeply into it, almost to the point of obsession. For instance, for days he's been insistent on watching the weather channel. Instead of begging to watch cartoons lately, he wants to watch the weather channel. He's even learned how to tune it to channel 214 to get it himself--the first instance, I believe, of his using the remote in this way.

Eddie's also reached an intellectual milestone. He's reached the point where he told me a joke, and I actually found it funny. Until now, Eddie and Luke's jokes have been of the Knock, Knock variety. And some of them are not so funny. But last Saturday, he told me a joke I had not heard before, and I actually laughed quite genuinely. Here it is:

There's this guy, and he's got a car full of penguins. And a policeman pulls him over and tells him, "Hey, you need to take those penguins to the zoo!"

So the next day, the guy has still got a car full of penguins, but they're all wearing sunglasses. And the same policeman sees him and pulls him over.

He says, "I thought I told you to take those penguins to the zoo."

The man replies, "I did! They loved it so much, today, we're going to the beach!"

(Ba-dum-bum)