Art and wordplay and biology

After she finished her math pages tonight, Sayer went to the drawing easel and pulled down a new bit of paper. She started drawing. She called to me to apologize for getting carried away and giving her cat 5 legs. I reassured her that it was okay and she kept going.

The next time I looked out I saw that she was giving the cat a hat. And he had a bat friend nearby. And a big square behind him.

And as I was chopping vegetables for pizza toppings she asked me how to spell splat. I asked how she thought it was spelled and she spelled it correctly. So she wrote it down in a randomly edged shape next to the cat. Then she turned around and said that those were all the things she could think of that rhymed with cat.

She'd drawn a fat cat in a hat with a mat behind him and a splat in front of him and a bat over him and a rat who sat just in front of him ... Later Alex helped her add drawings for pat and brat, and labeled most of the pictures.

After she finished her pizza and was waiting for dessert Sayer went back to the easel another drawing. She drew a cow and wrote 'moo' next to it's head. I asked how to spell cow and then we listed words that rhymed with cow and Sayer wrote them all down. Then she drew a deer behind the cow and as she was finishing him I asked why he was following the cow. She drew him such that his front legs seemed to bend up with hands giving a thumbs-up sign. She said that he was sneaking up on the cow to eat it. I said that deer were herbivores and would not eat a cow. Maybe it was a young deer coming to nurse from the cow.

This led to a discussion of whether one species would nurse the young of another species. Jaden was not sure. I told him a story of the lamb my dad brought home that was adopted by our nanny goat, who had recently had triplets, and we decided that sometimes it might happen. Then we looked over at Sayer's drawing because she had been doodling away while we talked. She said she was drawing all the creatures she could think of that made milk for their babies. Next to the cow and the deer she had a stick figure woman and she was beginning to work on other animals. We ended up with a cow, a deer, a woman, a seal, a whale, an elephant, a mouse, a squirrel, a giraffe, a cat and a dog. Then the paper was rather full.

I wonder what interesting conversations the next piece of art will inspire ...