How a Car Works

The paragraph below is about a five-year old boy who lives near us.  With his mother Rosina's permission, here's a quote from a family letter in our inbox yesterday:

Elijah is keenly interested in how things work, and often asks Will for explanations. One morning when I was feeling blue, Elijah came up to me and said, “Do you know how a car works? Ask me how a car works.” I asked him, and as he started explaining, I started laughing! I chuckled over it all day. Later, I got him to repeat his explanation again and I copied it down word for word. (First he said, “Do you want to know how a diesel engine works or a how a gas engine works?” I said, “A gas engine.”)

How a car works (by Elijah): You fill it up with gas, then you hop in and turn the key. When you turn on the key, it flips a little switch and that little switch turns on a big solenoid and then the solenoid turns on very strong current and turns on the starter motor. The starter motor turns a little gear then the little gear makes a big gear go round and round. The big gear turns the engine over. Then the fuel pump pumps a little fuel over into the engine and then the intake valve opens. And then the fuel injectors put a pretty fine squirt of fuel into the pistons. Then the intake valve closes and the piston goes up. The pistons have been sucking air into the cylinders. Then here come the strokes: the intake stroke, compression stroke, power stroke, and then the exhaust stroke. The piston compresses the gas down to a little bit. The piston goes up and then at the top the spark plug fires and it ignites the fuel and air which goes into the combustion chamber and it burns really rapidly. That pushes the piston down and then the piston starts coming back up. That pushes the exhaust valve open, and pushes the exhaust out of the engine. The exhaust goes through the exhaust pipe a little ways then it goes to a catalytic converter. And then the catalytic converter burns up a little gas. And then it goes through the exhaust pipe a little more and then it goes to another catalytic converter. The exhaust goes through the exhaust pipe a little more then it goes through another catalytic converter! And then it goes out the tail pipe. And then it starts over!

I know less than Elijah Schmucker about how a car with a gas engine works, but I know just enough to know that he's got a lot of details down pat.  Can you tell that the child's dad is a veteran teacher?--or did you guess him to be a mechanic?  As far as I know, high school auto mechanics and plenty of home-based puttering opportunities produced this knowledge.  I suspect Elijah is way ahead of where his dad was at the age of five.  Elijah's wide-ranging attentions can apparently be focused laser-like if the subject is as riveting as How a Car Works.  Perhaps he's on his way to becoming a teacher.  His first lesson plan looks to me to have resulted in an outstanding class session.  It niggled in his mother's head all day and, if you're still reading this, you've perhaps learned from the little teacher as well.

Curious children and engaged parents living life together is the best learning situation of all.