Mysteries, Music, Myths, and More

P recently told me she was enjoying reading for a little while after she went to bed. She was doing this by the overhead light because her flimsy bedside lamp had finally taken one bump too many and broken. I gave her the sturdier clamp light from beside my bed so she wouldn't have to climb down from her loft to turn off the overhead light before sleeping. She really appreciated that! A few days later, P started sleeping until 10 a.m. instead of her usual 8 or so. After a couple of days of that, I put two and two together and thought to ask whether she was reading late into the night. Yes, she said, on some recent nights she'd read entire chapter books -- A to Z Mysteries in these cases -- after going to bed. Mystery solved! We talked about the wisdom of going to bed a little earlier if she wanted to read a lot, and of turning off the light earlier if we had something scheduled early the next day. She's continued devouring books at night, but wake-up is getting a  little more consistent. I used to read voraciously at bedtime, too, though I paid the price the next day in fatigue at school on nights when my parents didn't come to tell me to turn off the light. I'm so glad P can sleep in a little and have whole books and good days, too!

We've done some kitchen observations this week. There was a glass, previously full of water with lemon, that was being used to dissolve some Alka-Seltzer. P noticed there were two lemon seeds in the glass, and that they were slowly rising and falling. We watched them for a while, looking for the causes of both. A seed would sink to the bottom of the glass, get bubbles stuck to it, float to the surface, get most of its bubbles popped when they broke the surface of the water, and sink again.

Also, there was some celery that had gone limp in the refrigerator. I wrapped the bottom of the bunch in a wet paper towel to try to revive it, and then thought of trying a couple of stalks in glasses of water with food coloring. P and T each chose a color (red and blue), and we put the stalks in to soak. After a couple of hours, not much was happening, so I tried trimming the bottom ends of the stalks, as you might with cut flowers. A short while later, we could see colored dots along the bottoms of the stalks, but no color seemed to be making it up higher. We decided to cut off the top ends to see if there was color inside that we couldn't see, and lo and behold, the color had made it all the way up!

We talked about this in terms of plants bringing up water from their roots to supply the rest of the plant (and transporting sugars from the leaves downward to the rest of the plant, though I don't think that part was demonstrated by our food-coloring trick). We also talked about why the celery stalks looked different colors (yellowish-green vs. bright, cool bluish-green) on the outside in terms of P's color mixing experience with paints and crayons.

Our movie-watching recently has taken a social-learning turn, though there are still things to learn from the content of the films as well. P and I watched The Music Man (the 1962 version) in a few stints over a few days. P wanted to know why Marian fell in love with Harold Hill, and I had to admit it was a bit of a stretch given her original, strait-laced character, but we talked about the various reasons someone might like another person; for example, agreeing with their life choices (no in Marian's case, though she eventually helped Harold choose a more honest life), having a lot in common (maybe, especially music), or enjoying the way being around a person makes you feel (yes!). Then P wanted to know why Marian had originally rebuffed Harold. I talked a little bit about the idea that women, especially 50 years ago, were not expected to give in easily to a man's efforts to make friends or get close, and also the fact that Marian had seen a lot about Harold's life choices but not much yet about what they had in common or how he made her feel. I should tie this in with Kiki's Delivery Service, a movie P knows well, in which Kiki refuses even to speak with Tombo because she comes from an old-fashioned village where it's expected a boy and girl should have a proper introduction before he speaks to her.

P had a lot of fun with the musical aspects of The Music Man, especially how two songs could be sung at the same time, as the film did with "Lida Rose" and "Will I Ever Tell You," and also with "76 Trombones" and "Goodnight my Someone." She read an interaction into the alternating singing of those last two by Harold and Marian -- a turning point in Harold's change of heart -- that I thought was pretty insightful. The Music Man has already provided some interesting musical exploration here: I discovered recently that "Till There Was You" wasn't original with the Beatles as I had assumed, and we played the Shirley Jones, Kristen Chenoweth, and Beatles versions for comparison. Then we went on a Beatles listening spree, which led to Chuck Berry, since the Beatles had also covered some of his songs. It was fun to look at how rock musicians could borrow both from earlier strands of rock music and from Broadway!

We also watched the Jim Henson: The Storyteller version of "Theseus and the Minotaur" recently. There were plenty of opportunities to talk about ideas like human sacrifice, tribute from one country to another, the Greek propensity to include human/divine and human/animal interbreeding in their mythology, and other more mundane ideas along the way. When the story ended, P wanted to know why Ariadne had encouraged Theseus to kill the Minotaur, her brother, whom she loved. This telling had shown her turning from trying to make the Minotaur's existence meaningful and bearable, to believing the Minotaur could never be happy, so I talked about the idea of putting a person or animal out of their misery when their existence has become too horrible to continue. For some real-life context, we talked about euthanasia for pets. And I brought up the opposing view that even a miserable existence can be worth continuing, either because one values life too much to end it, or because there is hope that things might improve. Ariadne seemed to hold all these ideas as she changed her mind back and forth about whether she wanted Theseus to kill the Minotaur. We also talked about how, when Ariadne fell for Theseus, her loyalty became divided. (Theseus, apparently loyal only to his own ambitions, apparently had no such problem.) P also wanted to know why Theseus had abandoned Ariadne on Naxos. Bacchus/Dionysus did not come along within the scope of this telling, so there was no happy ending for Ariadne. That led to a discussion of tragic flaws -- problems that can lead to a person making the same mistakes over and over -- and how Theseus's tragic flaw seemed to be that he made promises too easily and had a hard time keeping them. He promised Aegeus he would raise a white sail on his return, but he didn't, and Aegeus killed himself in despair. He promised Ariadne he would take her with him when he left Crete, but he abandoned her. He promised his mother he would return to her, but he never did, doubtless leaving her heartbroken after her earlier abandonment by Aegeus.

Today we went to our local unschooling park day and enjoyed learning first-hand about irrigation ditches, culverts, miniature cattails, skate park etiquette, and angular momentum, as well as just having a good time playing with other kids and moms. T had a first, as he moves from parallel, structure-centered play to beginning to have some pretend and other play with other kids his age (that is, without an older child leading the way). He told me about an interaction with another child his size, who he called a baby when he described her to me. I told him her name, and he said, "I like she. She my best friend." I think that's the first time he's described anyone as a friend, without an adult prompt. Hooray! Now to conquer the objective case, third-person, singular, feminine pronoun. Hey, a week ago I don't think he had she, so it's all good.