Greek Mythology For Beginners

I looked at the whiteboard and saw there were a ‘couple of Medusas’ on it. I quickly added some familiar characters (and words) and called him in to see.

He’s starting to create characters now, whether it’s clay, or playdo, or drawing Medusas on the whiteboard. We started play-drawing on the whiteboard – mostly so I could quickly draw something he might recognize and scribble around using his imagination and my drawings…well, doodles…

He asks me about the tale of Medusa from time to time (starting from the time he received his Medusaceratops toy) usually starting off with the question ‘who didn’t want Medusa to have her true love again?’ (it used to start as ‘who’s that snake lady again?’)

His play-drawing adventures have turned Medusa’s statue-making powers into cocoon powers. She uses her eyes to cocoon people, at which point they come out as members of Medusa’s army. The first one she transforms is Jack, her true love.

You can see in the video how easy it is to ‘add lessons into playing’ by sprinkling in some words and some answers to his questions…like why is Medusa a half snake with snakes for hair? You can’t answer that one without answering/researching a dozen more!

I think he’s finally calling him Hades now, but he had been calling Zues’ brother ‘Heavens’ when he couldn’t remember what I had called him.

Graffiti (pronounced so it rhymes with ‘Heart of Tafiti’) was introduced.

He had seen in on some buildings and some trains. I told him there was only one place to make graffiti if he wanted to try. Skate parks! (he was pumped)

painted smile and a skatepark

Their tiny hands don’t yet have the power to work the nozzle and everything, and unfortunately the can we brought was broken, and really only taught them how to get paint all over dad’s hands…We picked up some blue and pink spray paint for attempt #2, but there was a school holiday and the skatepark was filled with kids so we haven’t tried them out yet – they can probably spray out ‘something’ to call it spray painting. (my smily face and unicycle graphic will have to do in the mean time)

Hanging out with a group of school kids for an hour was pretty beneficial for him in learning new tricks and seeing other kids doing lines that hadn’t yet crossed his mind. Those advantages came from studying the kids of all ages – not trying to find something he and all the other 5 year olds could do together because they were the same age. It was quite something getting to watch him doing down ramps that he was staying at the top of the last time, and didn’t even bring the scooter up to the week before.

Science Experiments

After seeing some experiments on youtube, he asked me about syringes to dye bananas. So we went to walmart to get some syringes. When we got there, he told me to stand back, he wanted to ask where the syringes were himself. He asked the questions, and she treated him exactly as I was hoping she would. As the customer…not some customer’s kid.

The results of the dyed fruit (bananas, then apples when the bananas were determined to be ‘not green enough’) were pretty lame (to me…who was picturing cutting open vibrantly coloured fruit…not some green or red around where the syringe went in…

Whether the experiment did or didn’t work didn’t matter… this was the first time they got to use dangerously sharp things. (he was already old enough for sharp things, but I wanted to wait till she was at that point before letting them both loose with sharp things. (They seem to be scissor safety experts at this point)

knife pass

So the apples weren’t too red, but they used syringes, knives, and the food processor…no one really cared about the kinda red apples soon enough…there was cutting and blending to do! Here’s an article about how knives cut

Sunday was a day for individual adventures.

Me and him went for a hill climb (me and her had gone to the grocery store earlier in the day). I couldn’t believe how quick and nimble the unicycle stroller was with one less kid in it! Once at the store, she led the way and put the groceries she could into the stroller – our conversations touched on what good fruit and vegetables look like, packaging, and anything else that came up. We also made sure to get the milk and fruit her brother had added to the shopping list.

milk and fruit

Now that the leaves are starting to fall, and he had gloves on, new climbing lines opened up so he got to climb in some new ways. And then to our surprise on the path home…the dead raccoon was still there!!

kid photographer and dead racoon
Dead raccoon