Day 28

Another day, lots of growth for Zack! He had his vision teacher in amazement this afternoon at the words he read to her. . .I'm supposed to get to hear them in the morning. . .I'm excited! So today we were talking about fantasy and reality in literacy, and Zack seemed to be having a hard time with it. Maybe I just didn't hear the conversation correctly (quite possible), but I had the thought. . .how much of our reality is constructed from seeing? Do six-year-olds know that animals can't talk simply because they have seen lots of animals and know they can't talk? How does Zack construct his reality? How does he know that animals don't talk besides hearing it from others? He hasn't ever seen an animal, so how does he distinguish reality from fantasy? I'm totally baffled by this. . .I guess it ties back to the basics of how we construct knowledge. As a seeing person, I can't begin to wrap my brain around this because so much of my personal knowledge has come from what I have seen. I want to visit with the vision team about this as it's a completely new venue for me. How do you teach a child who hasn't ever seen the world what reality is? Too deep. . .enough for tonight! I didn't think my quest to document inclusion would cross over into philosophy. . . :)