Ever bored or need a break from screen time? Then it’s time to play with your tongue! That sounds gross, but bear with me: I’m talking about tongue twisters. Of course, when you give your tongue a twist, it’s your brain that gets a workout, but we don’t call them ‘brain twisters’ because that’s just not as much fun to say.
My favorite tongue twister is “Stupid superstition!” Not only does it convey a pro-science message, if you try to say it three times fast but fumble it, you end up spluttering something ironically truer: Super stupid-stition! It has layers of meaning, and it makes me laugh! How geeky is that?
Be fairly warned, though. Once you send your mind and mouth around the twist, there is no going back. Soon you’ll start collecting tongue twisters from around the world, and next you’ll find you’ve developed a linguistics hobby. Which is even geekier than causing yourself a fit of the giggles by sometimes slipping-up saying something surrounding slitted sheets. Just ask Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers; he is a slitted sheet savant.
One smart fellow, he felt smart.
Two smart fellows, they felt smart.
Three smart fellows, they all felt smart.
It is harder than it looks, and when you fumble it you end up with fart-smellos which is just ridiculous! 🙂
For Read Across America Day last week, I did a library program for families where I had volunteers from the audience read pages of Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks out loud, cold. It was great fun because the adults stumbled as much as the kids who were just learning how to read (if not more), so it really broke the ice and got everyone laughing and cheering each other on across the generations.