World Religions, Wild Birds, Wooly Animals, and more

It's been a very scheduled week, for us. P went to a day camp focused on world religions at our church this past week, so we had a school-day schedule, but with a longer commute. P had a lot of fun at the day camp and made some friends she can see again at church or for play dates. On various days the camp activities focused on Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Earth-centered religions, and Unitarian Universalism. They heard stories, sang songs, learned dances, and visited some nearby places of worship for different faiths and spoke with ministers or educators there. Each day there was time for play, meditation, journaling, and art as well. Getting up early and getting places on time was a little hard, but it was nice that no one would get in trouble for being a little late, and it helped that P was anxious to go, so there was little foot-dragging in the morning.

T and I spent camp times letterboxing, playing outside, reading stories, running errands, and having naps. T is becoming a good hiker for short distances. He loves walking a pretty trail, seeing a new bird (he was the first to see a spotted towhee on one hike), and checking out creeks, boulders, and interesting plants along the way. One day we saw -- actually, we heard its piercing calls first -- a killdeer and were treated to a virtuoso broken-wing display (though which wing was broken was debatable!) as it tried to lure us away from its nest. We took a peek back at the nest to see the beautiful spotted egg, and then left the amazing bird alone. I wouldn't know most of these birds myself, but we're carrying our Colorado bird guide everywhere these days.

In the afternoons after camp, often we'd head someplace with a letterbox and a fun place to play, and take advantage of both. On Thursday afternoon we visited a little mining museum, which a local historical society opens two afternoons per week. We saw a diorama of a nearby coal mine, mining tools, textiles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and implements for cooking, farming, blacksmithing, sewing, and more, all from around the same period. A volunteer docent answered most of our questions; the most mysterious thing we saw turned out to be a cream separator. P, closely examining a rail car formerly used in the coal mines, decided (correctly, I think) that a funny-shaped piece of wood sitting on top of the wheels was a brake for the car.

This weekend there was a wool market in Estes Park, and P and I went on Saturday afternoon. P liked it so much that we went back on Sunday, taking T with us. At the wool market we saw llamas, alpacas, paco-vicuñas, angora bunnies, sheep, and goats on display, as well as fiber from all of them, and got to interact with some of the animals. We watched demonstrations of sheep shearing and sheepdog training, and saw the sheep-to-shawl teams hard at work spinning and weaving their contest entries. In the children's tent, we saw people spinning and weaving on three different kinds of looms (jack, rigid heddle, and inkle), and both P and T tried their hands at inkle-loom weaving. P, who is still getting clear on how buying things with cash works, chose several small things to buy with allowance and birthday money, and she got some real-life math lessons along the way. I find that cashiers and shopkeepers will often take a few moments to provide some consumer education when a child is making a purchase, and I've been pleased with how pleasant and informative they have been.

On the way to and from the wool market, we had great opportunities to talk about a lot of things:

• Jerky and smoked meats and their use for winter or traveling provisions (we stopped at a place where these were sold and tried some)
• Water wheels (the place we bought the jerky had one) and how they have been used
• Windmills and why they are called that (as opposed to wind engines or wind turbines) -- historic connection to grinding of grains
• Local geology -- There are a couple of hard sandstone layers in the local rock column, and depending on how much they've tilted, you can see mesas and hogbacks that have formed. P definitely got this -- she remarked on some such features when we drove back over the same route on Sunday. We also talked about the Front Range's past as a seashore area, and this connected up with some large fish fossils P saw a couple of years ago on a driving trip through Kansas (the erstwhile inland sea).
• Driving etiquette on mountain roads, including the use of pullouts to let faster drivers pass

In addition to our hiking and outdoor play, P recently said she wants to learn to skateboard. I haven't really tried it since I was her age, and I never got the hang of it then. We have a neighbor with a child a little younger than P, and he skateboards, so perhaps he can help out with P learning. I don't think T would be far behind; he was fascinated when we stopped to watch kids playing at a local skate park. I do think, though, that I'll encourage P to finish learning to ride a two-wheeled bike before taking on a skateboard. She's so close, I think another outing or two might get her off and running, and she's excited at the prospect. (Our local topography is so hilly that beginning bike-riding practice requires an outing with a parent to flatter ground, or I'm sure she'd have it down already.) The risk-averse side of me hopes she'll stick with biking and forget about skateboarding, but I think if she wants to do it, I can buy her the appropriate safety gear, find someone to teach her, and give her my blessing. Heck, my coordination and balance have improved since I was seven -- maybe I'll try to learn, too.

It Never Rains But It Pours

After a couple of largely uneventful weeks, we are having a doozy. We started with preparing for and hosting P's seventh birthday party this weekend. It was a letterboxing party, with clue puzzles to solve and follow to specially-planted letterboxes in our yard and some willing neighbors' yards. There was a mix of strong readers and still-emerging readers among the guests, and they worked well together, each doing what they could, and also enjoyed creating and using their own signature stamps. Everyone had a good time, but especially the strong readers, who relished the reading of clues and the use of logbooks.

I learned, in the runup to the party, that P seemed to think that the fact it was "her party" meant she didn't need to help prepare, clean, or extend any special courtesy to her guests. We had some good talks about that (though I'll admit some of them were at high volume!) and she ended up realizing that the sole automatic privilege of being the guest of honor at a birthday party is being the one to blow out the candles and open the presents. She helped a reasonable amount with preparations and was a reasonably gracious hostess, and she really enjoyed seeing several friends she hasn't had play dates with since leaving school. We have gone a couple of times to be at school when kids got out, so she could play with friends on the playground after school, and we've had play dates with some friends, but still, it was a welcome gathering. Now that we've introduced her friends to letterboxing -- and some of them have really caught on with joy -- we have a new possibility for play dates!

A few people gave P books for her birthday, which is starting to help her out of her rut concerning what books to read. She's enjoying Sideways Stories from the Wayside School, and she's gotten a start on How To Train Your Dragon. Before her birthday, she was adamant that she only wanted to read her usual series, but after a brief complaint (beyond her guests' hearing) that the gift books were not the books she wanted, and a brief reassurance that these books were surely chosen because other kids her age loved them, she's picked them up without any further urging from us.

P is still enjoying her Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus fixes. She discovered the MTH web site, where kids can play games related to the books. She's read enough of the books now that most of the content is familiar, and she had a good time with it. That said, she hasn't asked about using the web site again since the first time. I don't think I'll bring it up; it was mostly quizzes and didn't seem to add much to the stories themselves. She's also watched MSB videos on sound, bats, spiders, recycling, desert life, and ecosystem interdependence in the context of the rainforest.

Other media have provided some nice connections. We watched Microcosmos on DVD from the library. It was awesome, of course. Both kids were riveted and had a nearly unending stream of questions about what was going on. It provided some real-life footage to tie in with the MSB video on spiders, and the discussions of what was going on tied in with some of our real-life experiences with insects and other creepy-crawlies. We also listened to an audio CD from the library called Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery, a Tale of Venice and and Violins. The kids have thoroughly enjoyed this series of classical-music CDs, which have storylines involving a famous composer as a character, with background and plot-related music from that composer (Vivaldi is our third such CD, after Bach and Beethoven). This was no different, except that when it became clear the story took place in Venice during carnival, P burst out delightedly that this was in the Magic Tree House book she is now reading, Carnival at Candlelight.

I've been doing a fair amount of letterbox-hunting with one or both kids. Recently we found a letterbox commemorating the history of coal mining in Colorado's Front Range. I read the historical information from the clue to P and T, and P, surprised, asked why coal came from underground. This led to a brief discussion of what "fossil fuels" means and why they are limited resources, at least at the rate they are currently being used. We've visited a number of interesting, fun, and/or beautiful places while letterboxing; this is one of my favorite things about the hobby. P learned a bit about how a reference desk works at a library, because we had to visit one to claim one letterbox. At that and other times recently, I've been noticing her becoming more willing to interact with strangers in the world to get things she wants. It's a great way to watch her blossom, and it will serve her well if she continues as an unschooler -- parents can't provide the desired information on every topic without recourse to outside experts, and if the child can interact directly with the experts (in a safe way), so much the better.

And finally, P is going to a day camp this week, with a theme of World Religions. I'll write more about that later, when I have a bigger picture of what it was like. In two days, campers have walked to two nearby places of worship and talked with staff members there about their respective religions. P agreed to be signed up for this camp months ago, and I'm not sure she realized what she was agreeing to at the time; but she does seem to be enjoying it quite a bit. I feel exhausted, being back on the school-like schedule for the week, but it's getting us all out of the house a lot more, which has been fun for a change -- especially after our stick-in-the-mud weeks!