"I'll take geography for 500 Alex"

(Ok warning, the level of bragginess in this post may be unbearable). Anyway, it all started when, well, it's hard to say when it all started. It was probably around the time that we checked out this atlas from the library.

Cole loved looking at the maps inside and spent large amounts of time doing just that. And started enjoying drawing some of the places, especially the good ol' U.S.

For Christmas we got him an interactive US map which he also loved. And again he spent lots of time looking at it and hearing the information about the various states.
At this point, I thought he would enjoy learning a song (that my little bro. taught me when I was like, 10) that recites all the states in alphabetical order. As expected, he loved learning this song.

So with all this love of the states going on, I got curious. And one day, a few months ago, I asked Cole if he would like to have a blank map of the United States and see how many states he could fill in. I didn't know exactly how he would do, because aside from the song, I didn't spend any time teaching him anything about the states, and he hadn't been learning about it in school.

I was totally blown away when he wrote in all but three states on his first attempt.


And I loved the way he spelled some of the states. Like "Tenisy" for Tennessee.

After the blank map game, he decided it was the best game ever and the next time we visited my family, he gave all the grown-ups a blank map to fill in. He LOVED grading all the grown-ups work!

The love of geography continued to expand as Cole learned all the U.S. capitals from a song. Learning this song was followed by learning the president's of the United States song. And as far as the first song he learned, the alphabetical one, because of that song, he can name all the states in alphabetical order in under 30 seconds.

He's looking more outside the US now and learning songs that list the nations of the world. It cracks me up when he makes comments like, "Mommy, that chipped paint is shaped like Lisutu" but then a few days later he says, "actually I got mixed up, it's actually shaped like Luxembourg and Lisutu is more shaped like Maine". He loves to ask me or any grown-up, "Do you want me to name as many countries as I can from (fill in the continent)?" He will then list the names of countries that I surely have never heard of.

But even just our planet is not enough. Cole has expanded to studying the solar system and beyond. Last week he composed a song about the solar system, and with Clay's help, made it into a music video. These are his lyrics:
Mercury you'd think would be the hottest
Because Venus is the hottest one you see
After that comes Earth, the home to all of us
And then along come Mars with two moons uncircular.
(musical interlude)
After that comes Jupiter with the Trojans
Then along comes Saturn with the beautifulest of rings
Uranus the sideways
And Neptune, by my opinion it would be the coldest.
(musical interlude)
Ceres in the asteroid belt and then
Pluto once considered as a planet
Humea eliptical and Makemake
And Eris in the shattered disc region.
(Musical interlude with more verses to come)


Oh, and this picture is an example of what Cole's Sacrament Meeting doodles have been as of late.
We may have a cartographer on our hands.