Every week, rain, shine, or blistering cold, I walk 3/4 of my children to the library.  They dawdle, lollygag, whine, request to take the car but more often than not we make it out the door in a mostly timely fashion and stride briskly to our destination.  The kids keep themselves entertained as we tramp along our frequently travelled route: chatting to me, chatting to each other, observing what is around them, running ahead, climbing things…slush puddle stomping .  Over time they have also developed a word game.  They call it First, Middle, Last.  It is a sentence building game.  What they do is they each announce what part they are going to create: first, middle or last.  The first has to be a name: famous person, animated character, anthropomorphic personification, fictional character, or a profession.  The middle is the connecting bit ie. ‘hid in his/her/its closet with’, ‘liked to dance to’, ‘not able to control his/her/its’.  The last is usually a thing: a food item, furniture, stuff that we walk by, my eldest daughter likes to choose diseases for this part.  When they have each formulated their part of the sentence, they each say they are ready, and, in order, say their part of the sentence, which can be odd, gross, weird, and quite frequently funny.  Within the Frankenstein monster sentences I see evidence of their complexity of thought, their interests, their maturity. I am frequently surprised by the breadth of their topics, their vocabulary, and knowledge, all sprinkled with a bit of toilet and body part humour.

We have had ‘Voldimort gave birth to fruit leather’ which has lead to a number of running jokes about not ever eating fruit leather again or equally tormenting the Harry Potter series villian by eating his fruit leather babies.

These were some of today’s combinations:

Winnie-the-Pooh /shares his mixed tape with /leukemia.

George Lucas/ finds a /stinky sheep poop.

Hannah Montana /frames a picture of/ Spanish verbs.

Cake (character from Adventure Time)/ eats a big steaming bowl of/ the Magic School Bus.

Obama’s/ favourite song is called/ zombie penises.

The black knight/ named his dog/ g-string.

Michael Jackson/ finds the temple of/ compost.

Snoop Dog/ lives in the town of/ war hammers.

Abraham Lincoln’s /favourite shoe brand is/ flower power.

Lightning McQueen/ plants a beautiful garden of /wet farts.