Time apart makes the heart grow (Week 34)

We had a lovely new experience this week. Kit had the camping bug on the weekend, and Leif's weekend was full of soccer meets, so we split up. Kit and Hannah went on a Gulf Island camping adventure, and I had a slumber party weekend with my two Capricorns. We got along famously. :)

First, Hannah's campsite pics:





She really liked being part of the whole scene: choosing a site, setting up the tent and chairs, cooking the meals. And the S'mores, both before bed and after EVERY meal. She's a Campfire Girl alright. They skipped rocks and checked out the forest, and just had a darned good time together those two!

Over here we did the soccer thing, the Thai take-out thing, and then headed out to Saanich to a fave walking spot, in Gowlland Tod Park.









I love this smokestack off in the forest. The park is the site of an old quarry, so there's bits of buildings here and there.



At home, Hannah became interested in a science kit we were given ages ago. It's a batteries-out-of-nature type of thing, and goes something like this:



It was a really tough concept to explain to her, but she liked doing the experiments, and we got all of them to work except the power-from-water one.

In other news, the second hand fairy has been kind to us this week. I scored 8 of these fantastic glasses at the thrift store. I LOVE them, so much that I've made an adults only rule about them, because I really, really don't want them to break.



And we scored a used games table with various surfaces to play on, and now they can play:





And I can craft:



And we can all be together in the same space. Nice.

Some great articles and links have come my way lately, and they're worth the time to read or watch.

One is about how children (and adults) should really learn math, by how they use math.

Another is a documentary I'd love to see called Race To Nowhere. It's incredible what we expect of our children, and how we see it as a reflection on ourselves.

Leif and Hannah were talking about who they would be in gov't (harper vs. Campbell based on their roles, not because they like either of them or not) and this lead to Leif wanting to give examples to Hannah of the different types of gov'ts there are in the world. This lead us to Wiki and my trying to explain how Canada's Constitutional Monarchy style differs from other similar Parliamentary styles. it was tricky, but I think we'll revisit it later in life. :)

We've had some great chats about gender this week. The kids have asked why is it so important to everybody, why is it only what's between your legs when you're born that makes such a difference? That it *should* be up to the person to choose which one they want to be (and i say yeah, but we're born already one or the other), which lead to Can you do or eat certain things to change your gender, and that lead us to people who are neither male nor female, and how we lack the necessary terms and acceptance for these other genders, that we still aim to put everyone in one of two boxes. Oh, how I love these out-of-nowhere chats.

I'll leave you with some funky, cool and kinda' haunting music that Hannah has created. She's taken tunes she knows how to play, but used different keys, not played the 'correct' notes, and thus created her own songs. See if you can pick out the 2 familiar tunes in this piece.



C