Life Lessons at the Playground

In previous posts, I've mentioned that there are rocks all over the base and that my children love collecting them. It doesn't matter if they are tiny pebbles or huge rocks that are too big for Allison to carry, they love gathering them. One day last week, we went on one of our long two hour walks. Allison pushed her stroller and Jackson pushed the grocery cart. Along the way, we collected rocks, sticks and pine cones. At first, the sticks were thought to be excellent weapons, but then we found other uses for them. We used them for writing things in dirt, pulling the grocery cart and excavating rocks that were almost entirely buried. The latter two became the favored use of the sticks. We spent forever in the blazing sun excavating rock after rock after rock. Before we found sticks, we used small rocks to dig up larger rocks. Once we found the sticks, Jackson was thrilled to make them his main tool for digging. Here are my mini excavators in action:

Exploring with them is so much fun; but in an effort to be real and to not glamorous my life on this blog, I will admit that there were times I thought I might lose my patience if Allison wandered off one more time and didn't come when I called her name. (She's a notorious wanderer, and it is taking a lot of patience and consistency to train her not to do it!)

Today, I decided that it was time to experiment with a possible use for all of these rocks that we find. We gathered supplies from around our TLF room. I had to stretch my imagination to find things we could use, but I was amazed at how well it turned out.

We went across the street to a playground where they have some dirt. The kids scooped dirt into a big white bowl. It was great scooping and pouring practice for Allison.

After we gathered our dirt, we found a shady place at the playground to conduct our little experiment. First, we put dirt into an aluminum pan and then we pushed it all to one side of the pan.

Then we filled a salt spice bottle with water and "rained" on our dirt.

As the "rain" poured down through the holes in the top of the salt shaker (this was the only thing I could find/put together that would imitate rain drops), we watched what happened to our soil.

Then some heavy rain came (in the form of a water bottle) and I asked Jackson what was happening. He said, "The rain is spreading our dirt all around and washing it away." Good observation!

After we finished raining on our dirt, we dumped the pan and started over. They refilled the pan with dirt, pushed the dirt to one side, and then took a bunch of small rocks that they'd collected and packed them on top of the dirt. We refilled our rain bottle and then Jackson rained on the rocks. (We actually had to do this part twice because we didn't clean out the pan really well after the first step (rain on dirt without rocks), so when the rain came, it was hard to see that hardly any dirt moved from under the rocks. Plus, Allison added more dirt to the area below the rocks while it was raining. She was an enthusiastic pourer! After that, I gave her a spoon and another a spice bottle to fill and dump with dirt.)

Me: "What is happening this time?"
Jackson: "The dirt isn't washing away."
Me: "Why isn't it washing away?"
Jackson: "Because the rocks are there."
Me: "What are the rocks doing?"
Jackson: "They're keeping the dirt from spreading everywhere."
Me: "How are the rocks doing that?"
Jackson: "Because they're heavy and they're keeping the dirt from moving."
Me: "When we go on our walks and you see rocks everywhere, what do you think would happen if the rocks weren't there and it rained?"
Jackson: "Everything would just wash away."

And that was his first lesson on erosion. Not too bad! I'm sure I could have googled an erosion experiment and made it much better, but I was just trying to do something simple with the things he sees around him on our walks and the materials we could gather in our TLF room. It was fun and he figured out one possible reason for all of the rocks he sees. I didn't have to "teach" him anything. I just gave him directions and asked questions, but he is the one who figured it out.

As soon as we finished, he had to go to the bathroom. I didn't feel like packing up everything and walking all the way back to our room, so I told him to go find a spot by the fence. I didn't realize that he was going to drop his pants to the ground and relieve himself without any shame! I looked up and could not resist laughing. I said, "Jackson! You need to cover yourself a little better when you're out in the open. People driving by will be able to see your booty!" This was his response and it was too funny not to capture:

Meanwhile, Allison enjoyed playing with our rocks, scooping and pouring sand into our giant mixing bowl and spice jars, and climbing the playground.

I just loved this image. My little earth lover is so content lying on the sand and tasting her rocks.

And the longer we stayed at the playground, the more learning took place. I don't know what the fascination is, but kids love to scoop dirt onto the bottoms of slides and then slide down. Jackson wanted to put as much sand on the slide as possible, so he began filling our white mixing bowl with sand and then asking me to transfer it to the slide. This was a lesson all on it's own because he had various tools to scoop with - a plastic spoon, a larger spoon from Allison's toy Mr. Potsy, the lid to the bowl, open spice bottles, and his own hands. It was fun watching him figure out which tool was the most efficient at scooping. Then his eye caught a glimpse of Jason's giant Coke bottle that we've kept around the room for sword fighting. He thought it would be a great tool for scooping. Really???

Me: "Why do you think it will be a good tool for scooping?"
Jackson: "Because it's so big."

Rather than telling him that it wouldn't be very efficient, I let him figure it out on his own. First, he tried filling the bottle by scooping the top into the sand. When that didn't work very well, he used the salt jar to fill the Coke bottle. I offered to time him to see how long it took to fill up the entire Coke bottle.

While he was filling, I asked him if he thought it was taking a long time and why. He replied, "Yes, because I am having to be really careful when I pour the sand into the bottle." "Why are you having to be careful?" "Because if I just pour it over like this," and he turned the salt jar over quickly, "a lot of the sand falls out." "Why is the sand falling out?" And here was the answer I was looking for. "Because the top is so small." It took him thirteen minutes. That was definitely persistence on his part. We dumped the dirt from the Coke bottle into the white bowl. I evened out the dirt and marked where the top of the dirt was on the bowl; then, we dumped the dirt onto the slide. Then I offered to time him filling the white bowl to the same level using only the salt jar. He filled it in less than two minutes. I asked him if that time was faster than the Coke bottle. "Yes." Then I asked him why he was able to fill the bowl faster with the salt jar than with the Coke bottle even though the Coke bottle was bigger (his initial reasoning). "Because the hole at the top is bigger." Yay! He figured out something else.

Even though the salt jar was more efficient, he was having too much fun filling the Coke bottle. If it hadn't been getting late, this next part could have been a great discovery for him. I asked him if there was anything he could use to make filling the Coke bottle faster while still using his salt jar. I asked him if he could think of anything that I normally have in our kitchen - I was trying to get him to think of a funnel. It would have been great to allow him the time to figure out the concept of a funnel, but I knew Allison's time was running out and we'd have to get back to the room for sustenance and a nap. (Now that I'm thinking about it, I wish I would have just waited until tomorrow. Oh well.)

We had a spare water bottle with all of the things we'd brought from our room. I knew I could make a funnel from the water bottle, but I didn't have anything to cut it with...until I found a piece of fence that was sticking out. Perfect! I used the pointed edge of the fence to poke a hole in the water bottle and tear part of its plastic. I was able to tear the rest of the way and cut the bottom off of the water bottle. Then I gave Jackson the funnel to use to help him fill his Coke bottle. We timed how long it took him to fill the Coke bottle using the funnel and the salt jar. Two and a half minutes. Not bad!

We dumped two or three more Coke bottles onto the slide and then we had to call it quits. Allison had reached her threshold! Here is a photo of the slide full of sand. I'm telling you, it took many, many bowls of sand to fill it this full! (And there's potential for another lesson here because as the slide got steeper, one bowl of sand made very little difference in the growth of the height of the dirt up the slide. We'll save that for another day.)

Jackson was so excited to slide down the slide with all of the sand on it. He thought he would slide really fast on top of all of the sand. But he quickly found out that he didn't go fast at all. He actually went really slow. (Yet again, another lesson for another day.)

Nevertheless, it was still fun pushing the sand down the slide. I let him enjoy his work while I gathered our stuff and got ready to go.

He asked me if he would get to do this stuff if he went to school. I told him that he would get to do fun experiments like this at school but he wouldn't be allowed as much time. Then he asked me, "Will we do this kind of stuff if I homeschool?" "Yes. All the time." "But will you give me as much time as I want." "Sure...within reason. We'll still have to stop for things like mealtime, naps for Alli and the baby, and responsibilities, but I will give you a lot of time. That is one of the perks of schooling at home." Perks for him and for me. I can't imagine someone else getting the privilege of seeing his mind grow and learn. It's like someone else hearing your baby's first giggle, watching him crawl for the first time, seeing his first steps, or hearing his first words. I know that school might be in our future, but right now, I'm thrilled at the thought of teaching my kids at home and doing life with them. I know that homeschool is a lot more than learning. It's growing. And I believe that it's important to carry out the daily activities of life with my kids helping them interact with people of all ages, races, backgrounds, learning levels, etc. That's what I'm excited about!