knowing through drama, modes of thinking and knowing

I found an old note I had written about Marcello in July 2007 on a trip to the Dominican Republic when he was less than 3 years old. It reads:

What are we to do to get to the child's experience. Always an interpretation of children's acts unless we know the performer well or parents or both. I asked Marcello, "Do you want more apple juice?" "Ice cream!" Imaginative play feeds the soul of my son. He was talking about me making him another playdough ice cream cone.

Two interesting things about this are that he does things again and again, acting them out. Also, his mode of learning is related to getting into something completely. I saw the same thing today when we got home. He took off his shoe in the elevator and told me we were going into the ocean and needed our shoes off. The carpet in the building hallway was the ocean for the rest of the day. He would stay, "It's cold!" "Get on the boat!" and other instructions to me. I told him I had my boat shoes on. He commits to something and decides to master it. This passion and flow is perhaps what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi talks about. I am not sure as I have not read him yet. I just know that we get into things in periods and that thing takes off. Last year it was chicka chicka boom boom for a while, as you can see with earlier posts.