"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Met

Having not seen the light of day all week, or our friends for ages, we accomplished both by meeting at the Met on friday. I took waaaay too many photos as I was experimenting with my camera in manual mode and all the tricky indoor lighting. Somehow my only "group" shot was the back's of these five monkeys as they played on the percussion wall.Caden spent loads of time at the train table. (He's going to be thrilled with his gift from Grandma Donna this Christmas.)Every so often he'd break for strolling around with his baby.Or a pony ride... Or to play firefighter turned secretary.Simone humored me as usual and posed endlessly, if not a bit manically at times.Caden followed her lead and took his turn hamming it up in the window too.

Gabriel didn't slow down till the end of the day when he arranged all the dinosaurs atop the digger and I managed to get a shot.
Sliding down the fire pole solo was Simone's biggest accomplishment of the day.And I'll end it here before I sneak in any mention of other pole-related activities that may or may not have gone on later that evening. Oops too late.

Posted by Jessica at 6:43 PM

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"By nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn
"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" -Henry D. Thoreau