Large Cats

Nathan has so many things memorized. If you didn't know some of these sentences were memorized, and if you could clearly understand what he's saying, you might be pretty impressed with some of the things that come out of his mouth: "Sheep have long, woolly coats.", "Cats have soft fur.", etc. I often wonder what is memorization and what he really understands. I am sure he knows what fur is. Does he understand what wool is? What a sheep's coat is?

This morning we were reciting the book "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" Nathan can name all the animals in the book, from memory, without benefit of having the book in front of us or looking at the pictures: panda bear, bald eagle, water buffalo, spider monkey, black panther, etc etc. Nathan said "Black panther, meow", as he often does. This makes sense because when you look at the illustration in the book, the black panther looks an awful lot like our black cats. I told him (as I have before) that black panthers don't say "meow". I told him that black panthers are large cats, like tigers, they snarl and growl. "Lion," says Nathan. And then "leopard." Aha! He is demonstrating knowledge of what constitutes a large cat! This is not something we've memorized. We have not studied lists of large cats. This is understanding a category of animal! How cool is that?! "Yes!" I said, "Lions and leopards are large cats! Like black panthers and tigers". I snarled and growled a bit, although I'm frankly uncertain as to quite what a leopard says. I faked it.

And then, a moment later Nathan piped in "Jersey cows". Well, no...