The kids love pistachios. We get them without the shells on sometimes, but the kids like them better with the shells. They are right. It is really more fun to pull the shell apart, eat the pistachio, and then suck on the salty shell.
This leads to pistachio shells showing up on the floor or in the couch cushions and other places where you least expect them. And... in the toddler's mouth.
I took the one year old and broke a pistachio open. The nut clung to one of the two shell halfs. I held out both in my hand. He took first the one without the seed, stuck it in his mouth, and played with it. Then he took the half with the seed, stuck it in his mouth, and a look of pleasant surprise filled his eyes. He tried to maneuver the shell around and chew the seed, and ended up with a little of both. Then he spit the shell covered with pistachio pulp filled saliva, out.
I then separated both sides of the shell and the seed, holding all 3 out in my hand. He immediately took the seed, leaving the shells.
Then I again separated just the shell in two, leaving the seed clinging to one shell. He took his little fingers, perfect for the task, dug the seed out, ate it, and to my surprise, threw the shell in the garbage!
Then I gave him a whole pistachio, shell and all. He gave it back to me, begging me to open it for him.
I no longer worry about him choking on a random pistachio shell he finds and puts in his mouth. When he finds a pistachio shell, he brings it to me begging, wanting me to somehow magically put a seed into it. And when we have a fresh stock of pistachios, I can.
Showing posts with label developmentalist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label developmentalist. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
School
Recently I took a wonderful class on coursera! If you want you can turn in participation and get credit for taking the class. I think it costs something like $100 to get a signed certificate that you took the class.
But I didn't have time to figure out how to turn in all the homework, and I didn't take it because I wanted someone else to know I had taken it.
I took it because I wanted to learn.
I would have to say, of all the classes I have ever taken, it was the most educational.
So what is school?
Is it a set of rules and tests to see if you followed them well enough to get enough credit to be looked at to get hired for a job?
To me, my learning, my reasoning for going to school was to learn. And that is what I got from it.
If they had been teaching something I could have learned another way, from a book or a video game, or from talking to friends, then that is where I would have gone for the information, not to school.
I do not send my kids to school. But I am very much for free public school! I have often lauded the opportunity there is in this country to go to school for free! But do we have free schools in the U.S.A.? Are our schools places where people can go to learn? Where people go to get knowledge they can't get better and easier someplace else?
Do our public schools give us knowledge or tell us what knowledge to get? Do they open our minds and help us discover new ways of learning we wouldn't have thought of on our own, so we can open the floodgates of the unknown and drink in the depths of understanding? Or do they restrict how we are allowed to learn and tell us not only what we "must" learn, but where and how we must find that knowledge. Are these really, by definition, schools? Places to measure and keep track of learning? Yes. Places to create competition over limited types of learning? To be sure. But "schools"? Places we can go to discover what we never would have known otherwise? I think not.
Now, there are many schools in other parts of the world, that do serve this purpose. Even here in the U.S.A., there are likely places where what a child discovers in school, cannot be had other places, given their situation in life.
If the only person I knew who could tell me what the words on a page meant, was a teacher at school, I would gladly walk 10 miles there and 10 miles back each day. Some kids do.
"there are no classrooms. There are no desks. It doesn't matter. There is a teacher,"
Thankfully we have a place that is free to everybody no matter their age, that provides boundless information in increasingly innovative ways. The Public Library.
That Book Woman
But I didn't have time to figure out how to turn in all the homework, and I didn't take it because I wanted someone else to know I had taken it.
I took it because I wanted to learn.
I would have to say, of all the classes I have ever taken, it was the most educational.
So what is school?
Is it a set of rules and tests to see if you followed them well enough to get enough credit to be looked at to get hired for a job?
To me, my learning, my reasoning for going to school was to learn. And that is what I got from it.
If they had been teaching something I could have learned another way, from a book or a video game, or from talking to friends, then that is where I would have gone for the information, not to school.
I do not send my kids to school. But I am very much for free public school! I have often lauded the opportunity there is in this country to go to school for free! But do we have free schools in the U.S.A.? Are our schools places where people can go to learn? Where people go to get knowledge they can't get better and easier someplace else?
Do our public schools give us knowledge or tell us what knowledge to get? Do they open our minds and help us discover new ways of learning we wouldn't have thought of on our own, so we can open the floodgates of the unknown and drink in the depths of understanding? Or do they restrict how we are allowed to learn and tell us not only what we "must" learn, but where and how we must find that knowledge. Are these really, by definition, schools? Places to measure and keep track of learning? Yes. Places to create competition over limited types of learning? To be sure. But "schools"? Places we can go to discover what we never would have known otherwise? I think not.
Now, there are many schools in other parts of the world, that do serve this purpose. Even here in the U.S.A., there are likely places where what a child discovers in school, cannot be had other places, given their situation in life.
If the only person I knew who could tell me what the words on a page meant, was a teacher at school, I would gladly walk 10 miles there and 10 miles back each day. Some kids do.
"there are no classrooms. There are no desks. It doesn't matter. There is a teacher,"
Thankfully we have a place that is free to everybody no matter their age, that provides boundless information in increasingly innovative ways. The Public Library.
That Book Woman
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