A Month In The Life Of A Wooden Man

[What DOES one do when one neglects one's blog for more a year and wishes to (possibly) start blogging again? Give up and start a new one?

There are many things I find amusing about cats. (Stay with me - I'm going somewhere with this. Plot not lost). In particular I love the nonchalant bottom licking that happens immediately after a failed landing.
I think I shall approach my neglect of this blog in the same manner: by pretending it never happened.

What are YOU looking at?

Groom...groom...groom...]

My Grandfather was an artist. I remember sitting, as a little girl, in the shed in the garden that he used as his studio, perched on a stool watching him paint. It was a magical place. The smell of linseed oil always takes me right back there.

One of the objects he had in his studio was a jointed artists' mannequin which I now have. It (he?) stands on a cabinet tucked away in the back of our living room next to the piano, together with some lovely old tins also inherited from Grandpa.

I, being one of those people who have an inability to see an object that has not moved for any period of time, don't usually pay him much attention.
Until recently.

Recently I realised he was actually catching my eye from time to time. It dawned on me that this was because he was quietly, but regularly (every few days or so), changing position.
And so I decided to keep a surreptitious photo log of his "movements" over a month or so.
Here it is.

1. Man carries his own stick and stand.

2. Man reclines as if sunbathing on conveniently placed black box.

3. Man doesn't want to look at whatever that is he's pointing at over there.

4. Man is distraught when he notices degree of hair loss in the mirror. (At least that is my interpretation of what's happening here).

5. Man has an emergency of the bathroom variety.

6. (Here I'm really not sure) Man is halfway through a pike dive? Man tries Parkour?

I knew immediately who the "artist" was - exactly because I did discover the artwork myself.
Unlike his mother and sisters (but not unlike his father), SirBiggs creates entirely for the pleasure of creating. He appears to have little need for his work to be acknowledged. He shows me some things, but mostly because I've asked what he's doing, or because he thinks I'll find what he's done amusing. It seems he lacks the need (a need I, and I'm sure most of us, have) for approval.

It makes discovering what he's learning (skills and knowledge) tricky. I have to stumble across things he's left lying around, or wait until a sibling shows me something. Sometimes he'll pipe up with a thought on a car drive which reveals a huge body of underlying knowledge he's absorbed and somehow processed. 

If I ever have to quantify what he knows I am positive I will underestimate.

These little clues do, though, reassure me that learning is happening, and happening well, albeit in a way that seems strange and dangerously haphazard to a very structured, systematic learner like me.

His private nature can have lovely outworkings. Sometimes he will deliberately embark on a little secret project just to surprise me. I woke up a few days ago to find this little note quietly tucked in next to a drawing I'd left on the kitchen table:

"Mom I think your pictures are brillient and < I don't know how to spell it>  butiful and perfect". [With a drawing of a hand in thumbs-up position and a stop sign saying "Don't STOP drawing"]

So now I know he knows he doesn't know how to spell "beautiful".
Yet.

The Mysterious Exploding Floor

On Saturday night ZooDaddy and I were disturbed by some mysterious creaking noises in the other end of the house. These then developed into louder more crunchy sounds and so ZooDaddy got up to investigate. When he reached the end of the passage there was an almighty crash (I initially thought he had knocked our huge display mirror off the wall). I waited for a bit, not quite what to do, but he soon called me to come and look.
Essentially what I saw was our kitchen floor exploding in front of us. It really was the most bizarre thing! We couldn't work out what was causing it. Obviously we were scared of subsidence or shifting of the house, but there was absolutely no sign anywhere else of movement - cracks or displacement.
We took some photos and, not knowing what else to do, went back to bed.
On Sunday all seemed stable. MrTepps was initially very distressed: "Look what happened to the floor! What a mess! It's broken, the floor!" For a while he presented us with broken tiles, saying sadly, "Fix it". Thankfully, however, it didn't take him too long to get over it.
After a quiet morning (including hosting the church meeting) it all started happening again. This time ZooDaddy was ready with his phone and managed to capture it on video. Here it is.

Learning on the Hoof

The more I speak to people about education, the more I realise how deeply engrained the learning=education=schooling paradigm is. People will acknowledge that learning can (and does) happen anywhere, anytime, but two sentences after that acknowledgement they are again referring to curricula, classrooms, exams and textbooks.
Our experience, of course, is of learning that happens outside of those parameters.
We recently visited ZooDaddy's cousin and family on their farm in the Eastern Cape. It was (as it always is) end-to-end fun - they are the most wonderful people, and the kids get dragged all over the place to do all sorts of things.

While I was looking through the photos of the trip, I was struck by how much they learnt while having all that fun. What follows are my favorite photos from our visit. Where relevant,  in the captions, I will discuss just a few of the conversations sparked/learning opportunity presented. It's amazing how much education takes place when one is not really paying attention to it.
Day 1:

A mid-afternoon arrival is followed by a drive in the bakkie (pick-up truck) when ZooDaddy mentions he'd like to photograph some of the wild-flowers we saw while driving along the roads to the house. MissyGeorge dons an appropriate outfit

Some goofing around with my camera (these shadows belong to LadyLolo and I)  leads to a discussion around shadow length related to time of day and the angle of the sun. 

We stop to look at a particularly rich wild-flower area. LadyLolo tries various different approaches to photographing the view but is unhappy with the "boring" results". I point out that none of her photos have contrast in them and one's eye doesn't have anywhere to start when looking at the picture, or any particular way to travel through. The brain battles to pay attention properly. I suggest looking for something of interest to place in the foreground. When she looks skeptical, I take this photo using a road sign and grass in the foreground.  She immediately sees the difference. The foreground initially draws the eye to the front, and once there, the eye is drawn in to follow the zigzag of the valley through the rest of the photo.

Being essentially a plant hunting expedition, the focus is essentially on the wildflowers. This area is rich with a great diversity of beautiful, and locally specialised flowers. ZooDaddy's cousins know their land so well, and the species that grow there. Their obvious passion for the flora on this farm shines through, They know the species names, when they flower, where they are localised. What a perfect example of interest-driven learning. Neither have ever studied botany, but they take often specialists around this farm and teach them. I love it!

A chance meeting with the neighbour who actually owns this patch of veld we were looking in gives the kids a glimpse of some of the complexities involved in making decisions regarding conservation. Despite the floral richness of this area, the reality is that this is also really good grazing land. A civil debate ensues (these are good friends) about the value of conserving an area such as this when weighed against the economic advantage of moving a fence to allow cattle into the area to graze. Not all decisions are simple.

The discovery of a "centipede" by MrTepps leads to a flurry of discussion when ZooDaddy and I point out that it is, in fact, a millipede. This leads to a question by MrBiggs as to what "milli" and "centi" mean, the wonderful dawning of realisation that this applies to measurements too (millimeters and centimeters) and the introduction of other numerical prefixes such as nano and kilo. I do so love etymology.

Day 2:

The "new" house (after fixing it up ZooDaddy's cousin's family have finally moved into the "actual" farmhouse) has an old neglected orchard. The kids are roped into collecting apples and figs. By the end of the visit they can recognise several different types of fruit trees, know about the difficulties of keeping birds and insects away from fruit, and have heard a lot about the importance of pruning the trees in order to "rejuvenate" them. In addition LadyLolo spends some time in the farm kitchen leaning how to make apple chutney and to preserve figs. There are many ways to use the fruit that is left after all that can has been eaten.

The highlight of the visit for MrTepps is unquestionably rides on the back of the bakkie. His enthusiatic "All aboard the bakkie" calls forms a recurrent part of the soundtrack of our stay.

Every time we visit ZooDaddy relishes the opportunity to get his hands dirty with some hands-on veterinary work and husbandry. Here he photographs a cow that had been attacked by screw worm, prior to her receiving treatment. (He has a whole collection of gory and disgusting photos. He'd call them "interesting".)

Flower discovery expeditions are frequent. After seeing to the ill and injured cows we go looking for Candelabra  Flowers (Brunsvigia grandiflora in this particular instance)

Day 3:

Throughout the trip the kids have pretty much free reign with my camera. MrBiggs discovers that if  he takes a series of photos of one of his sisters in motion in quick succession, then scrolls through them rapidly in viewing mode (oh, the JOY of digital!), it looks as if they were moving on the camera. What an irresistible introduction to all the knowledge and information surrounding the art of animation. We talk about how the brain sees, early animations (including the phenakistoscope which we have met before), the difference between those kinds of animation and the animation we see today.

(Aside: All the pictures taken actually led to some later research and experimentation at home using Windows Movie Maker to make stop motion video)

ZooDaddy does a bit more veterinary work on the farm - vasectomising 4 rams, thereby creating so-called "teaser rams".  One aspect of their education that I suspect many kids of vets, farmers and, to some extent, doctors get an early start on is reproductive biology. It's difficult to make it a taboo subject when they are surrounded by mating, birth and discussions about sexual biology. While ZooDad operates he (and ZooMomma) answer all sorts of questions regarding male reproductive physiology. All sorts.

And there it is. Life=Learning.