Mac's doing all kind of cool stuff in his Reggio Emilia-inspired Pre-K. Basically, they do stuff that the kids want to do, and from my perspective, the teachers do a super job of, like, enhancing and encouraging them to expand on their inclinations.

One such inclination was "discovering" and sketching a dead bird that flapped into their window and dropped dead outside.

"It was a nice object to draw," their teacher explained, "because it wasn't moving." Later the class buried it, which I guess was preferable to the teacher flicking it into the woods or something like that.

Last weekend, when Mac and I saw another dead bird on the boulevard, he said, "Wait a minute! Let me discover it!" Then, he crouched down and stared at it for awhile, pointing out the feathers and such. "Okay," he said, and we walked on.

The same thing happened with a little dead baby mouse he and the neighbor kid located. In that case, however, the neighbor dad flicked the rodent into the street after their kids rode their bikes down the block. I was really glad he flicked it. I mean, there's no way I'm going to spend my days burying road kill, no matter what Reggio says.