Category

Clay

• 07.26.09
  Clay Play
  Building, Clay, Summer (3)

  In my first visions of parenthood I saw myself on a sailboat. Our family was learning abroad, working magically by uninterrupted wifi on open seas and anchoring at my whim at ports in a clockwise path around the Mediterranean Sea. The stage set for bedtime reading of the Greek Myths; ancient history learned in context. In reality, we live a different life in Silicon Valley. What we learn of the ancients springs from the pages of books and rests in the dream of going there someday, to the birthplace of our language. Right now we're reading about the part where the Sumerians ...
  
  
• 05.24.09
  Beard’s Ideal Curriculum
  bugs, Clay, Crafts, forts & such, nature study, Spiders, Sticks, Woods (9)

  Before a child can build, hunt, farm or write code they have to learn to be a person in the world.  I don’t mean learn to be person in our urban rational world.  I mean learn to be a person in our natural intuitive world.  Children experience the world by touching, balancing, smelling, repeating.  Plastics and concrete are not particularly “experience” rich materials.  However, woodland full of soft moss, squiggly creatures, decomposing humus and running water is the ideal setting for honing a child’s intuitive nature.   Before children can engage in the rational process of hypothesizing, implementing and refining they ...