I’m not sure how it got started, but the kids have a new favorite game at dinnertime.

As much as we can, we have tried to make dinner a family affair on most nights.  Timing has been switched around so that we all eat around 6 or 6:30, and M usually manages to get home from work in time to sit with us (sometimes just barely!).  It’s a bonus for all of us, really. It’s fun to be together, the kids are working on table manners and waiting for people to be done, and it means M and I eat dinner before 9PM.  I’ve also tried to get away from making separate food for the kids, though some weeks are better than others, and there are definitely meals when they only eat fruit and yogurt. Ah well.

Anyways – the game.  It’s a simple one. All we do is ask the kids to try to repeat a word.  Except that M is usually in charge, and comes up with some of the trickiest words that he can. He’s got a pretty impressive vocabulary, plus a science major to pull on, so he can come up with some good ones.  It started out with fun words like “phenomenal” and “stupendous.”  Then he tries to get creative and starts in with “combustion,” “exothermic,” and “aquadynamic.”  Heck, he’ll throw in random names of chemical compounds from the organic chemistry days.

But the kids think it’s absolutely hilarious to try and repeat these crazy words Daddy comes up with (and, yes, Rebecca sometimes calls him Dad.  Where does she get this stuff?).  Daniel especially loves it, which is not too surprising as he’s always been more talkative than his sister.  They both give the word a try, and often come quite close to pronouncing it correctly.  M and I cheer, and they are thrilled.  Sometimes, of course, they bungle it horribly and switch syllables around.  When that happens, it usually makes the adults laugh hysterically, which only adds to the fun of the game.

Are they learning something from this?  I don’t know, maybe.  It reminds me of when I was a little kid, and my dad would “teach” me square- and cube-roots (yes, he used to be a math teacher). And then, in front of other family members, he’d “quiz” me on what the square root of 36 was.  Everyone got a kick out of it, myself included.  Did I really know what the “cube root of 27″ meant? Not really, and yet I also remember that when the concept was introduced in math class, it felt pretty familiar.

Often the word repeating is quite enough on its own.  Sometimes M will pause and explain what something means, and sometimes the kids will ask. But we don’t go into the game thinking we’re out to beef up the kids’ vocabulary by having them repeat random scientific terms. Maybe they’re getting good practice with different word sounds. Maybe they’ll actually remember a couple of the words.  Or maybe they’re just having fun at the dinner table with words.  And that, on its own, is just fine by me.