An iPod touch is good for a lot of things.  You can use it to listen to your favorite music and podcasts.  You can read books on it.   You can play games. You can download apps that will allow you to do...just about anything you can think of.

But I had no idea that an iPod (or any mp3 player) could also be a vocabulary builder.

When Mr. Third Grader came home from playing at a friend's house, he had a question for me:  "Mom, what's your favorite JEN-RAY?"

It took me a little while to figure out that what my eight-year-old pronounced "jen-ray" is really genre.  After I answered his question, I asked where he'd seen that word.

I knew he had seen it, not heard it, based on his, um, creative pronunciation.  "On my friend's iPod!" he proclaimed.  "Can I have one?"

No, he can't have one.  But I'm glad that it came in handy to expand his verbal horizons.

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