Seals. They lay around on flat surfaces. They make funny noises. And they must eat a lot judging from their size.
Silas. He lays around on flat surfaces. He makes funny noises. And he eats a lot. Obviously my son gives all signs and indications of being a seal. And yet recently he has begun to move away from sealdom and toward what may be a promising future in...noticing things. Sometimes. Okay, rarely. Maybe.
A few days ago, Tehva poured herself a bowl of Heart-to-Heart Kashi cereal. You know, the kind that resembles little hearts in structure and sweetened cardboard in taste and texture. As Tehva poured on the organic whole milk, rejoicing in her new found ability to fill a bowl to the rim without spilling a drop, tiny black bugs floated to the top.
"Ewwwww!" Tehva whined. "There are bugs in my cereal!" I gave Tehva a Tupperware and showed her how to skim the bugs off the surface and into the Tupperware so that she could chow down on a bug-free breakfast. (Of course she ate it! That was organic milk and that stuff ain't cheap!) Silas silently looked on and then uttered a single syllable: "Ew." See? He noticed!
And then we visited Jamestown National Park, nestled along the James River. We were all peering intently at an archaeologist screening dirt in order to find tiny bits, heads bent in concentration, knotted tightly in a group of tourists, when suddenly Silas screamed, "Whoa! Mom! Look!" Everyone paused and did a collective readjustment, squinting or bowing heads to look more closely at the dirt in front of us. "Look! A cargo ship! On the river!" What an observant boy.
And then there was the top of the hour news stories that we were listening to on NPR the other day. After the five minutes of talk about Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and American troops, Silas sighed. "Why is this always about war?" Wow. He noticed and judging from his use of the word "always" he has noticed this trend before. I was nearly dancing in the driver's seat.
A Google search on "observation skills in boys" yields nearly one and a half million hits, so obviously someone other than Silas has issues with this. The first thought that comes to mind when I consider his inability to see any further in front of him than a video game at arm's length is to Google, "Ways to improve observational skills in boys." All of the solutions that surface are decidedly feminine and include sketching flowers, writing journals, and staring for long periods at photos of random individuals doing odd things like wearing umbrellas on their heads (my apologies to you men out there who enjoy such activities...I didn't say you were feminine...please keep your head. Er, heads?). And Silas is so not into any of those things.
My intention by doing this search, of course, was to find a way to incorporate observational skill development into this year's curriculum along with the thousand other things we all hope to incorporate in the school day. However, this past year I came to realize that in my little homeschool there is not enough time for everything I (or they) want to study, and that even if we really really want to study something, most days we are mentally finished by 2 p.m. And that's on a good day.
And so if anyone out there has any ideas about ways to develop observation skills in boys that don't involve flowers, sketching, writing long entries in journals, or bizarre photos, please let me know.
Silas. He lays around on flat surfaces. He makes funny noises. And he eats a lot. Obviously my son gives all signs and indications of being a seal. And yet recently he has begun to move away from sealdom and toward what may be a promising future in...noticing things. Sometimes. Okay, rarely. Maybe.
A few days ago, Tehva poured herself a bowl of Heart-to-Heart Kashi cereal. You know, the kind that resembles little hearts in structure and sweetened cardboard in taste and texture. As Tehva poured on the organic whole milk, rejoicing in her new found ability to fill a bowl to the rim without spilling a drop, tiny black bugs floated to the top.
"Ewwwww!" Tehva whined. "There are bugs in my cereal!" I gave Tehva a Tupperware and showed her how to skim the bugs off the surface and into the Tupperware so that she could chow down on a bug-free breakfast. (Of course she ate it! That was organic milk and that stuff ain't cheap!) Silas silently looked on and then uttered a single syllable: "Ew." See? He noticed!
And then we visited Jamestown National Park, nestled along the James River. We were all peering intently at an archaeologist screening dirt in order to find tiny bits, heads bent in concentration, knotted tightly in a group of tourists, when suddenly Silas screamed, "Whoa! Mom! Look!" Everyone paused and did a collective readjustment, squinting or bowing heads to look more closely at the dirt in front of us. "Look! A cargo ship! On the river!" What an observant boy.
And then there was the top of the hour news stories that we were listening to on NPR the other day. After the five minutes of talk about Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and American troops, Silas sighed. "Why is this always about war?" Wow. He noticed and judging from his use of the word "always" he has noticed this trend before. I was nearly dancing in the driver's seat.
A Google search on "observation skills in boys" yields nearly one and a half million hits, so obviously someone other than Silas has issues with this. The first thought that comes to mind when I consider his inability to see any further in front of him than a video game at arm's length is to Google, "Ways to improve observational skills in boys." All of the solutions that surface are decidedly feminine and include sketching flowers, writing journals, and staring for long periods at photos of random individuals doing odd things like wearing umbrellas on their heads (my apologies to you men out there who enjoy such activities...I didn't say you were feminine...please keep your head. Er, heads?). And Silas is so not into any of those things.
My intention by doing this search, of course, was to find a way to incorporate observational skill development into this year's curriculum along with the thousand other things we all hope to incorporate in the school day. However, this past year I came to realize that in my little homeschool there is not enough time for everything I (or they) want to study, and that even if we really really want to study something, most days we are mentally finished by 2 p.m. And that's on a good day.
And so if anyone out there has any ideas about ways to develop observation skills in boys that don't involve flowers, sketching, writing long entries in journals, or bizarre photos, please let me know.
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