In teaching my boys everything about everything I look around myself, and ask, What is right before me? Well, one day I was at the grocery and a bag of salted peanuts in the shell was staring at me. I envisioned them living in this beautiful wooden bowl of my husbands. Wabi-Sabi style. I envisioned the boys having snack time and manipulating the nutty center right out of the shell. What I came to see in reality was their little hands working, squeezing, popping, and cracking the yummy-ness right out. I could see how this little activity would play its part in strengthening their hands, to ready them for holding and using crayons and pencils and paintbrushes. The boys are already holding these utensils, but it is truly a matter of dexterity, and fine motor skills. Of strengthening and training. So, it is therefore my job to trick with clever ideas. The fact that I could mix snack time and handwork is a bonus.
The boys had already been with me to Whole Foods to purchase peanut butter. We watched the machine grind the whole peanuts into butter. So again we talked about how that little nut makes peanut butter. With children you must repeat, repeat, repeat. It is good to use the same approach many times, but then to also come at something with another angle to give them perspective. This was another one of those times I like to call “this is where it comes from.” “This is where it comes from,” has developed into a series for us, which teaches sustainability. This series for our family is about CHOICES, as well. So many people have no clue life is filled with Choice.
What Choice is before you right now? What are you gonna do about it?
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