Park Day and Potluck

Two days, so many things... here goes!

Yesterday P asked to watch Happy Feet, so we did. I hadn't seen it before, and found it a little distressing how much of the movie is about mating (this doesn't come across in the Commonsense review), with associated raunchiness. I mean, yes, animals spend a lot of energy on attracting mates, but the movie really played it up in anthopomorphic style, with macho guys bragging about how much the girls wanted them. But most of that seemed to blow right by P and T, and there was a lot of cuteness and some good messages about self-respect and valuing differences. The kids got their first exposures to elephant seals, an icebreaker ship, and the fact that there are penguins in South America. Since the icebreaker in the movie comes through in a confused blur, we looked up photos of real icebreakers afterward.

Later, P was busy and T was asleep, so I decided to watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy and fold laundry. Lots of laundry. P gravitated to the TV episode, which I should have predicted. In this particular episode, the sexual content was fortunately well-veiled, so instead P learned the definitions and some symptoms of stroke and heart attack, what a defibrillator is for, the location and function of the aorta, what a cardiopulmonary bypass machine is for in open-heart surgery, and what a surgeon has to do when she loses a patient (call the family and break the news). Most of this was brief first exposures (I stopped the show a few times to help her understand what was going on), but hey, everything needs a first exposure, right?

Later, the whole family went to the hardware store because we wanted to have a magnetic wall board that we could also write on. Magnetic white boards are expensive, so we looked at various DIY ideas before settling on buying a piece of sheet steel and painting it with chalkboard paint. My goal is to use this for magnetic poetry, with the option to write notes or additional poetry bits. Our fridge doors are more than fully committed already! While we were at the store, P found a trinket she wanted to buy for $2.75, but she didn't have her allowance money with her (she's decided against buying binoculars for now), so she got a loan from UnschoolerDad. This morning she paid him back. She gave him two dollars and went to get three quarters, but he suggested she give him another dollar and he give her one quarter back. P found that confusing, so we did some more money math, with a little hundreds-digit action and a first exposure to borrowing in subtraction. P was game. We also talked about why the dollar sign looks like it does. Apparently I got that wrong (there's what I learned while writing this post!). Ah, well -- more learning opportunities later, if we like.

Off to the grocery store this morning, where we learned what whole papayas look like. They didn't smell like fruit, though, so we didn't buy one to try this time. Anyone know how to choose a good papaya?

This afternoon we went to the weekly park day for a group of unschoolers in our county. T has gone with me twice before, but this was P's first time to be out of school for a park day. On the way there we slowly passed a freight train and I talked to P and T about shipping containers and what they're for. We read the labels on them to see if we could see where they originated. Tonight we looked up some of the companies; we saw lots of photos of container ships and online tracking systems for container numbers. Maybe next time we can write down a number or two and see where those containers go!

At Park Day T played mostly independently as usual -- he's a little young yet for really engaging with playmates, but he loves playgrounds. P was shy and played on her own until I facilitated a couple of introductions to other kids. She was still hanging back, so the three of us went down to take a look at the stream bordering the park. We fished out some trash and looked at how the grasses growing around the stream were holding up the stream bank, and how one tree, apparently quite healthy, was growing in a J shape from an overhanging edge of stream bank. Then we saw some other unschoolers making their way to a nearby footbridge and car bridge to play, and we joined them. They were trying, unsuccessfully as it happened, to capture a "gardener" snake (I'm guessing garter; I never saw it, though P caught a glimpse). Having given up on the snake, one of the boys started climbing up a storm-drain pipe that emptied into the stream. (Another adult and I checked for the origin to make sure there wouldn't be unexpected flow in the pipe.) Several others followed. P opted out of the tunnel crawl, but thoroughly enjoyed tracking their progress and looking and listening for them at the streetside origin of the drain. I was nervous about all the potential falls and other injuries, but I didn't see a lot of serious hazards, so I just kept watch for any more seriously foolhardy behavior. At school P usually played with girls, mostly doing less active forms of play, so I was glad to see her climbing around with a mixed group and getting a little dirty. My favorite place to play when I was her age was also a creek at a park near my house, where it went under a footbridge and a railroad bridge -- and the large pipes where it went under the neighboring road. This felt like sharing a happy piece of my childhood with P. T tromped around under the bridge a bit, too, with me helping him on the steep parts.

On the way home we talked a little about pagodas (we saw one near the park), car transport trucks (ditto), what happens when you run out of gas on the highway (didn't happen, but it came up when P guessed that was what the car transport truck was for), and the meanings of a couple of road-sign symbols.

And then we cooked amaranth for the first time, as part of dinner. It makes a nice porridge, which T is now enjoying, having awakened (after the rest of us ate) from the nap that started on the way home from the park. Everyone else liked it, too, so it was lucky there was enough left for T!

Could P have encountered all this in a couple of days while enrolled in school? Perhaps, if we'd had an active weekend and encountered some interesting playmates. But not likely. The park days help me move a little beyond my comfort zone. (My own upbringing did not include being allowed to play in storm drains, at least once my parents found out that's what I was doing!) Also, I'm being more liberal with access to video  than I was before. That's partly because there's more time in a day when most of it isn't filled with school, so using a couple of hours for a movie feels like less of a loss to family time and more active play. It's partly because I'm approaching video as a learning tool and not just entertainment or babysitting. And it's partly because I'm trying to let greater access deprive it of its privileged place in many kids' lives (here's a little bit by Pam Sorooshian on TV and the economic theory of marginal utility), so video can take what I see as its rightful place, as just one of many potentially interesting things a person can choose to do with her time.