Copasetic Flow

Seven year-old No. One spent a lot of time last week pretending to be both a robot, and ‘One: Creator of All Robots on Robot World’.  Walking with her to art camp I’d realize I was actually walking with a robot when I’d hear, “I AM ROBOT 33.  WHAT ARE YOU?” “A Human” “NO, THERE IS ONLY ONE HUMAN ON ROBOT WORLD.” “Who’s that?” “ONE CREATOR OF ALL ROBOTS” “Yeah, I’m her dad.” “SHE TOLD US SHE WAS THE ONLY HUMAN ON THIS WORLD.” “Ah, well, I’m from another world.” “HOW DID YOU GET HERE?” “On a spaceship.” “ONE THE CREATOR OF ALL ROBOTS, TOLD US THERE WERE NO SPACESHIPS.” And so on. It was fun walking around talking to an argumentative robot.  It did get us more than a few sidelong looks on the bus.  Ah well, they were probably too bored before ROBOT 33, and I got there anyway. Friday instead of busing and walking to summer camp, we traveled via plane to visit with relatives—a family member had passed.  It was really nice to get to visit w...

What if museum tours aren't about learning facts?  What if it turned out they've always been about learning life? I read about a museum in the US this week that was cutting their docent led tours for kids.  They had done a study to determine how many 'facts' communicated by docents were retained by their kid charges.  The results came back to reveal not many facts had in fact been retained. We have wonderful museums here in San Francisco, with brilliant docents.  Watching their various docent-led programs, it's occurred to me that facts aren't the most valuable commodity they provide.  What seems far more important to me are the various affiliations the kids make by interacting with the docents.  Here are a few of them. Learning the Love The docents are, to a person, enthralled with the subject matter they lead the kids through.  What I see the kids learning, rather than a list of facts, is the singular fact that someone has such a love...

I've seen a lot of discussions about how much screen time is healthy for kids lately, and to be frank, I kinda drew a blank for each and every one of them.  For historical reasons--we were grad students when each of the gang was born--we couldn't afford 'screens'. It wasn't a hardship, it just never even occurred to us that we needed them.  So, the gang here doesn't really use screens to speak of.  Seven year old No. 1 can read and write, so she occasionally asks to make addenda to texts to Mom-person, or our Director of Tactical Ops, but that's about it. So, I found myself wondering, "What do the kids do when we go to talks or other occasions where they might eventually lose interest?"  This morning, while looking for contact info for some of our museum docent friends we haven't seen in awhile, the answer flashed before my eyes, literally.  The gang uses paper in place of screens! I haul around little 3x5 notebooks in my back pocket ...

We experienced an incredible luxury a few days back: a gentle rain storm at the DeYoung Museum of Fine Art.  We were killing a day so we figured we’d go see a little art, drink a little coffee, and hangout with the kids.  The rain had kept quite a few folks away from the museum and had driven just about everyone else inside.  The five of us, the parents along with 6 year old No. 1, 5 year old No. 2, and 2 year old No. 3 sat in the museum cafe sipping our coffees and apple juices looking out into the adjacent and oh-so-damp sculpture garden.  As the level of the apple juice bottles fell, one of the kids looked up and said, “Ummm, can we go play?” “Sure.” And that was it.  The whole gang wearing nothing heavier than a sweatshirt  trundled out into the sculpture garden in the consistently falling heavy mist that us San Franciscans call rain. The garden is a big grassy expanse probably equal to the size of two lawns from typical American suburbia. ...

The kids climbed this week!  Not metaphorically, although, I’m sure they did that too, but actually physically.  They all climbed things they’d never been able to climb before.  It started, I suppose, with the giant El Cid statue outside the Legion of Honor here in San Francisco, where the kids met their friends to go see the Monet exhibit one last time before it closed.  The statue is a huge brass affair mounted on top of a ten foot high concrete pedestal.  One of the kids started to climb up it.  Soon the other five kids followed suit.  There were beveled curves cast into the concrete that looked to have been created expressly for the purpose of defeating climbing.  The kids, however, quickly came up with a way of wedging their boots onto the concrete while grasping the bevel above and pulling.  They were making it up the side, but it was a bit too tall. Perhaps it was later that night—it might have been a few nights before—we found our...

Doing and Viewing Art at the DeYoung Museum was an incredible program offered here in San Francisco that, sadly, came to an end last weekend after a 35 year run.  In the program, kids were led on tours of the museum by incredibly talented docents.  After the tour they worked on an art project informed by the tour, led by equally incredibly talented teaching artists. People often ask what we think our kids aged six, four, and two get out of visits to the DeYoung.  I think the following open thank you note to the Doing and Viewing Art docents sums it up pretty nicely. To the DeYoung Doing & Viewing Art Docents: Thank you so much for making Doing & Viewing Art such an extraordinary experience for our three kids!  You were what made the program great, and it won’t be the same without you! It was your confident, and inclusive tours of the museum that inspired our kids to be confident in the museum.  It was your love of the art that seeded our kids’ l...

The kids' grandparents are visiting from TX.  On our bus ride back from downtown yesterday, No. 1 was excitedly detailing everything she wanted to do for the rest of the day with her grandparents.  As the list grew, her grandma suggested that she write it all down so she wouldn't forget anything.  No. 1, popped out her sketch book, a box of crayons, borrowed my pen, and voila!  My favorite part was all the bacon!

Over the last few weeks I’ve experienced an uptick in the number of “Unschooling?  How does that work?” questions while out and about with the kids .   +Sue Elvis   posted a great example of how unschooling works for her family , and made a very apt rabbit hole analogy.  As a fun  example of exactly how homeschooling works for us, here’s one of our own rabbit holes annotated with the various school subjects that were covered as we pursued it.  You’ll find a topic or two, networking for example, that don’t fit into a traditional school curriculum at all. No. 1 and I have been reading Doom Patrol .  Saturday night, we noticed a reference to Hannah Höch in the comic book.   Topics: Reading, Reading Comprehension, Art Appreciation Turns out, Hannah Höch was a famous Dada artist.  Dada, an art movement founded in 1916, gave birth to the surrealists.  Doom Patrol is very surreal in both its story, and art.  For...

The restoration effort to save Tesla's last existing laboratory in Shoreham, NY got a mention in RASL #10. To learn more about what's going on and how you can help go to: http://teslasciencecenter.org/about.html There will be a conference at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Saturday November 5th to support and raise awareness for the effort. If you're interested, you can find out more at: Conference Call for Papers About the Tesla Science Center We're also working on setting up an amateur radio special event station to transmit from somewhere near Wardenclyffe that day. Any interest from the hams?

The 'Product Slide Gadget' provides a slide show that automatically displays all the products offered for sale on your Etsy store. When a shopper clicks on the image of one of your products, they are instantly linked to the order page for that product. An example is shown below. Example Slide Show To see what your store will look like, go to the setup page . The gadget can be embedded on any web page or added to anyone's iGoogle home page. Just follow these steps: 1. Setup your store's slide show and get the HTML to embed on a web page like your blog or any other page where you can edit the HTML. and/or 2. Add your slide show to your iGoogle home page. Although it is not required, please consider making a donation to help us keep offering services like this one. Setup your store's slide show and get the HTML to embed on a web page If you have navigated away from the slide show setup page, you can get back to it by clicking here . When you arrive at the setup pa...