a glimpse into the mind of my almost 6 yr old

this morning i was doing math with isaiah. each math lesson end with a worksheet. on each worksheet there is a word problem. the word problems are different every day. there are no pictures on the worksheets and there are no ongoing story lines within the story problems. this morning's word problem was this, 'shawn had 3 stuffed bears. his uncle gave him 2 more bears. draw a picture of the bears and write a number sentence to show how many bears he has now.'

isaiah starts to draw the bears. this is the conversation we had while he was drawing.

isaiah: did his uncle die?

me: um, no? why would you think his uncle died?

isaiah: because he's old.

me (trying to figure out why he's assuming this 'uncle' is old): why is his uncle old? are your uncles old? is uncle jared old?

isaiah:no

me: is uncle dustin old?

isaiah: no

me: why would you think this uncle is old?

isaiah: because he looks old. he has wrinkles on his face.

me: oh. what does shawn look like?

isaiah (in a 'like, duh, mom' voice): like a kid. he's not old.

me: oh, ok.

i find this fascinating. he obviously thinks in pictures. he has this whole story going on in his head from just 2 little sentences in a math problem. makes me wonder what he's picturing all the time!