Bits and Pieces

The kids are still recovering from their colds so we just spent the day catching up and doing whatever came to mind. I adore these kinds of days when I truly live in the moment and just watch the learning unfold. It is always fascinating.

We started the day snuggled on the sofa reading Musa's new library books about trees.  We especially loved Wacky Trees, by D.M. Souza.  Of special interest were the Strangler Trees and the Boabab Trees.

                                

The strangler trees are native to every tropical place except the Hawaiian Islands. These trees start as a epiphyte. The Curtain Fig in Australia is a famous strangler tree. Retta thought these trees were "mean."

We dreamed of the day we could sit under a Boabab tree in Africa.

According to African Legend, the gods planted a large tree in the rain forests of the Congo. One day, the tree complained that the moisture of the place was making its trunk swell, so the gods moved it to East Africa's Mountains of the Moon. When the tree continued to complain the gods tossed it into a dry area where it landed upside down. This is why, the African Baobab tree now appears to have roots growing in the air.

We then looked through a tree identification book and identified most of the trees in our yard, which is a little trickier when there are no leaves. We learned the different layers of the inside of the trunk. Musa thought it was really great that the very core of the trunk is called the heartwood. This seemed to be evidence that trees do have feelings, if they have hearts they must have feelings.

We decided to finish painting our homemade maracas. Musa started his, became bored and asked me to finish. He retrested to his PS2 to continue to conquer the world.  Retta and I painted and talked for the longest. She told me her maraca was the Earth and we lived in the Pink Zone.

She then got out her rocks and shells and I just sat and watched her. First she told me that Daddy and her had found these rocks on top of the rainforest tree that fell in our yard during the tomato. (tornado)  She then discovered that all the shells had spiral shapes to them. She would pour water into the shell and then quickly turn it around and around in an attempt to get the water to go inside...I watched her do this repeatedly, never saying a word, and after about 5-6 attempts and failures, as the water would just pour back out when she turned it over, she stopped and looked into the shell and asked me if we could smash one open to see what was inside. We did. When she saw the continuum of the spiral inside, she grabbed another shell and this time just slowly pored it in, but did not turn it.

Nothing had to be said, no textbooks used, by uninterrupted thinking, observation, cause and effect,experimenting, she had it down. What a fabuous classroom.

Then she aked me to listen to the sound of the ocean as I held the shell to my ear. I asked her why we could hear the ocean in a shell, and in her perfect simple accepted wisdom she said,"Because, Mama, the shell comes from the ocean, no matter how far the shell goes away from the ocean it is still from the ocean, so it will always remember, just like when you die I will always be able to hear you because I came from you and I will remember." This was not a striking revelation for her, just a simple sentence from a knowing soul.

After lunch we all curled up on my bed and read a bunch of books. Musa read, Lesters Dog, by Karen Hesse and I read Martha Calling, by Susan Meddaugh. Both the kids laughed themselves silly with this book. Retta read, Picture This, by Alison Jay and then Musa wanted to read Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes. We had fun trying to say Chrysanthemum fast.

It was a glorious day.