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The word of the day, week, month…

Have you ever watched the old TV show, Pee Wee’s Playhouse? A hundred years ago my baby daughter and I watched that show religiously. Monday through Friday, we never missed it. It was only one of four TV shows we ever watched. And of those four TV shows, Pee Wee’s Playhouse was by far our favorite show.

Every episode of Pee Wee’s Playhouse had a “word of the day.” The word was introduced at the beginning of the show and then throughout all the skits during the show some character would accidentally say the “word of the day” in the course of their conversation. Then all the other characters on the show would suddenly start screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and clapping. Why? Because someone uttered the “word of the day.”

It wasn’t just the other characters on the show who went crazy whenever someone said the “word of the day.” My little girl and I also went batshit crazy when we heard that “word of the day.”

What an incredible, fantastic method of vocabulary-building! Pee Wee’s Playhouse was such a wonderful educational show!

But my little girl started to grow up. A little more slowly, so did I. And then suddenly and mysteriously Pee Wee’s Playhouse got cancelled.