AJ�s summer preschool program is actually called a �camp,� although there seems to be little camping involved. The curriculum is much more theme/project oriented than during the school year. Last week, one of the days was devoted to autobiography. As a result, the halls of AJ�s school were decorated this morning with massive self-portraits accompanied by the photos of the artist. AJ painted a huge grinning face in red, blue and yellow with brown ears protruding from the sides of his head. It took up the entire page of a giant piece of paper. With the assistance of his teachers, he also wrote an autobiography of sorts. Here it is in its entirety:

All About Me!

My name is AJ. I am 4 years old. My birthday is March 25. In my family I have a cat, mom and dad. One thing I really love to do is draw. I love to eat spaghetti and cucumbers. One thing that scares me is forests. When I grow up I want to be a baseball player. If I could have any pet I wanted I would choose a dog because they�re furry and fuzzy. I�m a special kid because I know how to do lots of things like jumping.

We�ll just gloss right over the fact that he mentioned the cat before he mentioned his parents and the fact that he�s afraid of forests (I�m guessing this last one is due to the fact that he watched Snow White for the first time last week.) At the bottom of the page, the teachers had listed �Here�s a picture of something I can draw. Can you guess what it is?� In this space, most of the other kids had drawn clusters of smiley faces intended to represent their happy families. Not AJ. He drew a very wide and short rectangle in turquoise crayon. It is �a timer.�

AJ has become increasingly fascinated with units of measure of all kinds. He checks the thermometer we installed outside his window every morning for our daily weather report, although he�s still not sure how to interpret the numbers. He hasn�t yet fully grasped the concept of relativity, that 32 is a lot of children in a classroom or a lot of eggs to eat for breakfast but that 32 degrees is not a lot of degrees. He has recently made up a story about Goofy Goose, a recurring character in the stories my husband tells him, where Goofy Goose has a cold. �You know he has a cold because his temperature is 0 degrees.� Perhaps we should be training him in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.

But timers are of particular interest, because the thing they measure is so incomprehensible. What is being measured? How long is it until lunch? Until bedtime? Until we go to the library? Until Uncle G. comes to visit? Until vacation? He can read the clock, tell the time, but he doesn�t know what it means. When I tell him what time his naptime will be over, he often asks, �couldn�t you make it 8 or 12 or 9 o�clock?� He�s not asking for a longer nap. He�s asking for more variety. At the moment we have reverted to pre-technological means for determining duration with him, a method inspired by my brother�s efforts at helping our niece count the days until her birthdays when she was younger. Our vacation is in five sleeps. There�s something soothing about observing the circadian rhythms governing the passage of time in a more concrete way. It certainly seems to make more sense than AJ�s digital clock. Perhaps it's no coincidence that AJ�s picture of a timer also looks like a bed.

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