sippin' celery

Inspired by Kitchen Science by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone.



It is a rare occasion that I tell Smootch what project she is to work on.  Mainly Smootch decides where to put her efforts or we work collaboratively, with Smootch as project leader and my input is seriously considered (but not always accepted).  Her interest level remains high and she is proud of what she has accomplished and learned.  The whole process looks a lot like Smootch playing and me staying out of her way.

Sometimes, though, after spending a lot of time on the internet or reading certain books, I get really excited about all the thing we could be doing, all the cool and awesome stuff that can be done.  My kids like to fiddle around in the dirt and spend hours in imagery play.  They are five and two years old.  What more could anyone want?  But my school trained mind has a fairly set idea of what Education looks like.  Activities that involve a set up with special equipment that the children can not handle alone and a multi-day time frame where the project at hand actually has to be put up out of reach of the child, lest it get wrecked or stains the rug; isn't this learning?



I'm so lucky that I get to laugh at myself sometimes.  Often, really.  And I get to question why I am pushing an idea or project that they are only half-heartedly interested in.  Is it for them?  Or for me?  Why can't I just do it for myself, why do I need my children around as an excuse to play, experiment, ponder?  Isn't home schooling for all of us?  

tick tick tick

We all have much to learn. Good thing there is time.

kitchen science

I love hanging out in friend Anita's house. Particularly her kitchen, which is filled with all sorts of odd, fermenting concoctions and experiments in food decay. And unlike my own kitchen, she is actually encouraging fermentation and rot.

She likes it.



The other day, friend Anita was distracted with upgrading her vericomposting worms habitat along with no less than five children crowding around, digging through the decaying material, trying to get a more or less accurate count. While she was busy counting and playing traffic controller, I pulled out my camera and took a few pictures to share with you.



Anita is a scientist of the purest kind. I love poking around the mysterious various jars and containers on the cupboard. Sometimes, as I run across a large bottle filled with murky looking goop, I try to guess where exactly it is in the complex food chain in Anita's home.

Is it on the way in or out? Or out from the people and in for the worms? Or it could be out from the worms and via the soil in the garden, back on it's way in for the humans?

It's all very funky and holistic.

I actually am not all that funky and holistic. I am more of a book reader than an activity doer. I let other people do the experiments and then tell me what they find. When I compost, I dig a hole in the ground, fill it up, and never think about it again. I have little knowledge of nitrogen and carbon and microbes and aerobic decomposition, whatever that means.  Though I love miso and mushrooms, frankly, they both sort of freak me out a little bit.  Are they really edible or have I just been lucky so far?
   
Ten years ago Anita kept me in worm poop for my spider plants.  Now she feeds me and my babies Kombucha tea and sauerkraut. I find it all very interesting from a distance, with hardly any desire to get up close to her little creatures and musky jars. I am not of the biology frame of mind.

But I have a little girl who is. Smootch, who loves bugs and jellyfish and wants to know how the trees get food and how cats make babies and has knowledge of the human body's various organs and their purposes that rivals the smarts of medical students. Smootch who started collecting biological specimens at the age of two (with one of my toe nails and a butterfly carcass). She of the magnifying glass.



Smootch wants her own bucket of worms. Really badly.  She wants to know stuff, see stuff, feel and, if she can, taste it too.  She's never experienced any suspicious thoughts about miso.

I'm feeling rather blessed that Anita is in our life at this point. Smootch can see how it's done in ways that I would never have the interest or patience for, and, in the meanwhile, I can tentatively dip my feet into the freaky deaky microcosmos in my kitchen. To start, I borrowed a book from Anita.



(Now that our kitchen chem and bio lessons are underway, I have to start addressing Smootch's questions about the non-organic natural world. Did I mention that she's been asking for a metal detector for two years now and that now she has an allowance of her own, she's almost rich enough to buy one? I don't even know how she knows of the existence of metal detectors?!

I wonder if the library has any books on metal and rocks?)