The New ABCs

Do you remember how you learned your ABC's? You may have started in Kindergarten—or even earlier if you had glasses with pink frames! Don’t believe me? Ask my friend Ellie. She is only four and she can already navigate through IPAD’s Interactive Alphabet. It even has sound effects! Go ahead—click on her picture yourself. Give it your best shot because I know you can do it!


—I’ll wait.

Meanwhile, I’ll join my friends as we again rehearse our melodrama/operetta Inside a Barn in the Country. We make our own sound effects as we identify various farm animals and the sounds that they make. Today we held colorful pictures of our favorite characters as we sang along with the rebus text.

Speaking of sound effects and pictures, I learned today that our class now has a Flip™ video camera. It is small and compact and easy to use. I think back to the days when my bigger-than-a-breadbox video camera used VHS tapes bigger than a book. Nowadays, by cracky, you can put your video camera in your pocketbook. And kids can shoot videos of themselves and their friends, publish them on YouTube and even share them via email!

These gadgets are wonderful as well as fun. But they can be complicated. I remember some of Robert Fulghum’s simple wisdom in his famous book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten:


—Share everything.
—Play fair.
—Don't hit people.
—Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

—Take a nap every afternoon.

To these I would add:
Life is always better when you wear pink-framed glasses!