Instead of the proverbial skeleton in the closet – the kind of secret that is dangerous – Ben just has an actual skeleton (or parts of one) hanging around in his closet. He’s hoping to build the rest of it out of big sheets of Styrofoam that came as packaging with our TV. He is so into bones and how they go together, I wanted to encourage his enthusiasm for learning.

The skull we got off the internet, and it comes with a key so we can learn all the names of all the parts. You should have seen Ben the day the skull came in the mail – he was rubbing his hands together and cackling with a morbid sort of glee. It was hilarious. His Dad and older brother probably helped that along a tiny bit… they’ve been teaching him the lyrics to rather odd songs. He sings about his “Dark, Black Past” as if he knows what something like that would mean. (I will have to get a recording of him singing this song from a classic metal band!)