I love this picture. It reminds me of how fun it can be to inspire my kids and help them feel brave enough to try new things. For a while, at the beginning of the summer, I was having a real tough time getting 3 year old Edgar excited to play outside. One day, I showed him a bunch of inspiring pictures of kids playing outside (from http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/). Suddenly, he really wanted to climb a tree. We immediately went outside to play (at 7:30 am), but don't have any great climbing trees in our yard. Later in the summer, we were at the zoo and he discovered a little out of the way area with some great climbing trees. He played there for a long time, SO PROUD of himself for climbing a tree.
Here at the end of the summer, we have gotten a little too stuck in our little upstairs room watching tv. I'm ready to get them excited about living again. So, this morning the kids and I decided to make a list of things we want learn more about this school year. We want to find books about stuff at the library, go on adventures, and just generally do more than watch Pokemon.
So...here's the list. I occasionally suggested a general subject area, but mostly these are all Edgar and Sabrina's ideas:
We want to learn...
- Water--how it comes
- Art--how you can put pictures on wood (inspired by a framed painting of the ocean)
- Animals--ones we don't know
- Letters--real ones that come true (??)
- Letters--how to draw Ls
- How Jesus makes our bodies (he wanted me to immediately draw a picture of Jesus making our bodies...??)
- Dancing--different kinds of dances
- Pull Machine (Me: what is that? Edgar: I don't know. That's why I want to learn about it)
- Colors--how colors come
- How to read
- How cars do the brakes
- Computers--how they plug in
- Tigers and Lions--do their stripes change colors?
- Video games--how to make it be on.
- Paper--how to make it
