It was a little cold, so Brooks pulled a blanket around himself.  The blanket caught on a chair.  Suddenly, Brooks was in a dark cave under the blanket.  He could hear strange noises from outside.  Brooks went to the mouth of the cave, and what did he see?  A huge, yellow plain stretched out in front of him.  A herd of elephants walked slowly by in the distance.  A giraffe stretched out its long neck to eat leaves off the highest brances of a nearby tree. 

"Wow!" Brooks said, "this is really neat."  He could feel the heat of the African sun.  There was something on his head.  It was a safari hat.  He was dressed in clothes the same color as the wide, wide plain.  In his hand he held a walking stick.  "I guess I'd better start walking," said Brooks.  "I don't know where I'm going, but I want to get there before it gets dark."

So Brooks started walking.  The African sun beat down and soon he was very hot.  He saw an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand.  He thought it was trying to stay cool.  So he stuck his head on the ground, but he couldn't put his head under the sand.  He had to keep going.

Soon he saw a lizard picking up its feet to keep cool.  Brookes picked up his feet, too.  But he was still hot.  After walking a long time, Brooks came to a jungle.  He went in among the trees, hoping that he would soon be cooled off.  But in the shade he was hotter than ever.

A parrot flew over his head.  A green snake slithered down the trunk of a tree and off into the leaves.  Brooks kept walking.  He found a little pond, where there was a hippopotamus swimming in the water.  Brooks wanted to go swimming, too, but the hippo was taking up most of the space,and besides, he gave Brooks a not-so-nice look, so Brooks kept walking. 

He was hotter than ever.  Before long, it would be dark, and Brooks was a little worried about being in the jungle after dark with that snake.  Up ahead, he could see a dark cave.  "It will be cool in there," Brooks thought.  So he went in and sat down.  He could hear someonen calling him.  So he came out of the cave's mouth, but he wasn't in the jungle anymore.  He was in his own room!

"Brooks!" called his mother's voice, "Come to dinner!"  So Brooks went to eat in his cool house. 

Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand to learn about all the fun things sand is used for. Sadly, that entry on sand doesn't describe the delight of dumping half the bag out on the garage floor to sift through, walk through, drive dump trucks through, and run fingers through.  It also doesn't explain how to make a fun sand bath for the chickens.  It does describe a whole list of other things that people do with sand that, brought down to a child-sized scale, mean fun.

Such as mixing the sand into paint to make textured paint.  (This is difficult, so I've got pictures for you.)

Puddles of (glowing, translucent) paint +

sand +

a little mixing.

or a lot of mixing.

And you're ready to create a masterpiece. A textured, sparkly masterpiece.

We may try making glass next. Or bricks.  We've still got half a bag of sand...

Here's another sand-related doohickey the kids love:  thisissand.com.  Click on the little gray box when you get there and it'll explain how to make an online layered sand creation. 

You have GOT to get yourself some of this stuff!

~Mother Bird~

A little construction paper, a little thread, a little printer or notebook paper for pages, and you have a book just waiting for a story. Or addresses.  Or stickers. Or thumbprint bugs.  Or unicorn drawings. Or...

~MB~ 

Other than all that ours and theirs are exactly the same.

Boiling water, mushroom can, chunk of paraffin, crayon for color: 

(Lesson learned: Washable crayons don't want to mix with wax.  Not wax-based, I guess.  Must be something else-based.  They just sorta sulk and gunk up the bottom of the can.)

Cotton string wrapped around whatever's handy, dangling into the bottom of the jar.  Adding different colored layers takes more time, sure, but you've got all day, right? And into the night, too, since you actually have electric lights.

And a windy, stormy night on which to test them out:

Lightning was striking really close and these two were hoping the lights would go out so their candles could save the day.  No such luck, but they did have a great time on the porch in the dark with them.  There's just something about candles.  Your own little fire that you can hold in your hand, carry around with you, stare at, wonder about, put down on a side table, forget about, catch the curtains on fire, burn the house down...

Hm. Thank heaven for those electric lights after all.  

~MB~

Tim is really cute, kinda goofy, probably about 17, and he knows everything. He's the anchorman for a series of little Flash videos about all kinds of educational things, and he lives at brainpop.com.  Now, I'm skeptical whenever anybody says something's "educational", because it's a catchall that could mean anything, and often means nothing.  But brainpop's videos are meaty-educational, not fluffy-educational.  And they'll let you watch as many as you want for five days for free.  

When we got the five-day free trial, I thought the videos were nice, certainly liked that my kids liked them so much, but forgot, when the five days were over, to bother to subscribe.  The kids didn't complain.  Must not've liked it, I figured.  About a month later, I walked by the computer to hear Tim chatting it up about the different ways mountains are formed.  Seems the kids had just been creating bogus email accounts on gmail and feeding them, one after another, to brainpop to get the five day free trial over...and over...and over...

I bought a subscription.

None of that's a problem. The problem is when my own cute geeky guy goes out of town for a couple of weeks and I pass the room where Tim's babbling on about microprocessors and my heart skips a beat.  I mean, come on, Erin! He's a kid, he doesn't even really know all that stuff, and he's not even real!

And that's when I dial Father Bird's cell phone number and get a real man to talk microprocessors to me.

A brand-new (full-spectrum!) stack of construction paper. 

Who the heck buys that much construction paper at one time??

Apparently we do.

The rationale behind the reading program is pretty easy to fathom. Kids who are out of school for the summer need to be kept reading to avoid mental atrophy. So the library provides them with fun, a list, and prizes for a certain number of books read. But I think there may be some underlying messages that the library doesn’t really intend, that are being handed out with the stickers and prizes.

First, the very theme suggests that kids need to start to do something they aren’t already. That for the duration of the summer, they’re going to engage in an abnormal activity sponsored by the library. Second, the list and prizes say that what is in each book is not why you’ll read them. Rather, you will read to amass titles and win a prize.

At the beginning of the summer, I took my children to the library and discovered that the summer reading program had begun. I signed them up and got two blank lists. We're already reading so much, I thought, we’ll simply keep track and get a prize on top of it. Everyone wins.

I procrastinated starting the lists. We didn’t read any less. But a few weeks later we were attempting to abolish the bead system in our house. The bead system was a setup wherein we gave beads for chores or tasks done, and the beads were redeemable for cheap knickknacks or candies. I began to be leery of the bead system when the children began to define everything in terms of how many beads it would earn them. “But why won’t you give me a bead for going to church?” “How many beads will I get if I eat my breakfast?” And so on.

So we sat down and talked about why we eat breakfast, why we go to church, why we clean our rooms, why we do everything. And I said to my son, “Well, what if somebody gave you a bead for...” here my mind scrabbled for something he enjoys doing and came up with the lame finish, “for reading a book?”

He snorted. He rolled his eyes. “Why would anybody give you a bead for reading a book?” He did a headstand on the couch. “That would be silly. You already LIKE reading books.”

Click.

After our conversation, I slipped into the next room and quietly threw the reading program lists away. Somehow, and I don’t understand how or why, the placing of a price on any activity sends a neon message that we are bribing them to do something they (don’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t) want to do. And my children, who can smell hypocrisy a mile away, respond by being completely human. They rebel.

So I wonder. We wring our hands and worry and try so hard to “get kids to read more”, and wonder why “kids these days don’t read”. And we set up programs to accomplish this task, with prizes and games to trick them into doing it...and maybe they don’t, at least in part, because we want them to so badly. I’m not saying that the library is intentionally doing anything wrong, but the whole program shows our underlying beliefs about children and reading pretty clearly.

After all, why do you eat breakfast?