Sunday we went to a birthday part for two of our friends: sisters with the same birthday. It was fabulous. A circus themed party with a family of performers. The mother painted faces. This was to regular face painting what stick figures are to Rembrandt. Full clown face basically. The kids loved it – not just ours, all of them. The father and daughter juggled and walked a tightrope. All the kids got to walk the tight rope too; it was about 15 inches off the
ground. They had games set up like you might see at a carnival. Just really, really fun.
I got to talking to the father afterward about how seeing them just reaffirmed my belief that you can learn doing anything. Then he said they homeschool and that there’d be no way to do it otherwise. When would an 11 year old learn to juggle six balls or walk a tightrope if they were in school all day? Very cool conversation. It isn’t everyday you meet a man dressed as a circus performer that can quote all of Blake’s The Tyger.
Afterward we went on a mini-road trip to grandma and papa’s house for papa’s birthday. Dinner was a blast. Again it was our usual method of learning through discourse. C told papa that they decided Pluto was a comet or asteroid and not a planet. D said that he wants to be a scientist so that he can prove it is a planet. He told him that the scientists decided that it’s orbit is too different than the planets so it’s something else. C said he wants to be an astronaut. So they decided that D will be the scientist and C the astronaut; that was C can go look at Pluto and come back and tell D all about it and together they can get it back in official planet status. I don’t know what I was doing will all me time at 4 or 6 but I’m pretty sure it didn’t involve discussions of orbits complete with hand motions showing how planets orbit versus Pluto.
