I have a terrible confession: it is a hard thing for me to follow a thread of interest through a day.
We started today in the middle ages, with the clear intent of reading through all the middle ages books we'd gotten from the library. All of them because Calvin is a determined child and that's what he wanted to do. It wasn't far from there to the illustrated book on the authentic building processes in late medieval castles and cathedrals, and it wasn't the stories themselves, or their heavy stones, or the references to kings or religion, that caught Calvin's fancy, but the simple question: how do they make the glass?
Yes, sometimes it's following the thread of interest that's the hardest thing to do. I know, I absolutely know, that the kind of education I want Calvin to have is one of empowerment, one that teaches him to trust his dreams and make them happen and that kind of education begins with honoring his interests and teaching him to take the step past the "I wonder" or "I will", straight into the doing. I know this, and still I am driven to respond to questions like "I wonder how they make glass" with "we can find out later but first let's finish this book," and how often do we remember to go back? The moment is gone. I don't know why it's so hard for me to follow his threads when in actuality it is the easiest and most rewarding thing in the world to do. But I did it today; We marked our place in the book and looked up glass blowing right away, and it was fun, and fulfilling, and rewarding. And easy. He asked, we looked it up. We watched almost thirty minutes of video on making antique glass and then he wanted to watch it again, and wanted to be sure that I saved it so that he could return to the topic at some other time.
And then there was more reading, and more reading, and piano, and more reading, and book cataloging, and laundry, and more reading and piano with dad (and pets galore because they all come out at feeding time), and, lastly, a return to the glass making discovery. YouTube is my friend, and I already had field trips to Greenfield Village on the brain, but now I'm moving them up in my mental calendar. And through it all I am gaining a new skill, one that is sure to be my best friend through of all of our days together: I am learning to follow his threads.
