Distractions

I laid out an ambitious schedule for us today on the whiteboard.  We did pretty well until we sat down at the desk for math. I gave Noah his math book and he sighed unhappily--his usual reaction to math. His best buddy Marty appeared from nowhere and settled herself on his math book. He set a smartie candy on her and declared that of course he couldn't do math now.

Sarah jumped right on that bandwagon and said, "Hey, how about we go outside and play some frisbee?"  I said, "Well...we have a lot of work to do."  Sarah replied, "We can't work ALL the time. That's boring."  I said, "Yes, but we can't play all the time either. That's unproductive and unreasonable."

Guess who won?  Yes, the children. I try to say yes more than I say no, but it's very difficult to strike the balance between work and play, good parent and pushover.  Sarah noticed that the three of us made an isosceles triangle while we were playing frisbee, so that counts as math. And they did do their lessons in their math books after we went inside.  But first we did some insect study, and a service project, and a street investigation.  It reminded me of when they were little and we would spend all day playing, reading, wondering, serving, discovering, and investigating. But as they have gotten older, I have tried to incorporate more structure into our days.

On the Monday after the Pumpkin Festival parade, we always take bags and fill them with the trash we find littering our street.  The parade lines up on our street, so it's always a mess afterwards. That was part of my plan for after math, so I just switched it to after the frisbee game.

We saw these strange markings in the street, and we wondered.

This big heavy thing has been in the middle of the street for several weeks, and I've been very curious about it, so as long as we were out, we rode our bikes over there to investigate.

Through the slat in the big heavy thing, we could see a huge hole.

 There were lots of markings in the street and flags and pipes nearby, so we figure there's going to be some digging soon. What does "blind tee" mean? 

The big green question mark on top of the heavy thing could have been painted there by me (but wasn't) because I've been wondering why this thing has been in the middle of the street for so long.

 Of course we couldn't leave without climbing on and through the pipes.

Sarah even did a handstand on one.

**Update: 9/30/15**

 The pipes we were frolicking on are now in the ground.