The Evolving Homemaker

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been reading a TON about kids and learning recently.  Funny thing, whenever I want to know about something, I go find all the information I can about it and teach myself. Why do we assume with kids it would be any different?

I am not an advocate of unschooling.  I feel the need for a bit of structure in my home and the knowledge that my kids are learning that which will propel them forward should they decide to go into science or engineering, they need a foundation.  I am just becoming WAY more open to HOW they get that knowledge.

This little example is FASCINATING to me.  My son, who is 6 1/2 has been watching Out of the Wild:  The Alaska Experiment on Netflix for the last week.  He has been obsessed with Alaska ever since some random documentary my husband was watching years ago about a guy who built a house in the Alaska wilderness.  He was like two, the movie was like ancient, but Alaska has never been far from his mind since.

He finished the season of episodes yesterday, and here is what showed up in my living room:

The box around the fire, is for keeping the wind away from the fire he would start if he was not in our living room, but in the woods somewhere.

Ingenious.  My 6 1/2 year old then proceeds to take the whole thing apart, to explain to me, a 37 year old who has no friggin’ idea how to start a fire from scratch outside.  And guess what?

Now I do.

First you pile small sticks on the bottom, then a few more rows of small sticks, space in between each, and rows going opposite the row below.  Then, you start to make the tepee angles on your fire.  Then you can light it from the inside obviously, and you will hopefully have a fire, if the wood is dry enough, the kindling dry etc.

They learn.  Our kids will spend hours learning what seems fascinating to them and take off with it! I did not encourage this at all.  He said, we (he and his sister) were going camping and he needed to go get wood.  He went out to the back yard, cut what I assume was my old sunflowers, came in, trimmed them all, made a fire ring with rocks and pine cones, set up the box to block wind and proceeded to find their sleeping bags and lay them out.

I am not worried.  They learn.

Spill it: What have your kids done that shocked the hell out of you?  Were you surprised by their ingenuity lately?  Amazed that they were listening during the last IMAX film you shared with them cause they spouted some random information to you later?  When have they blown you away with their imagination?