Alan & Brenda Leonard

While it hasn't been particularly calm around this list lately, it's been a
great week at my house.

Tim and I spent all of Tuesday afternoon hunting toy stores in town for a
much desired lego set. We eventually bought a different, smaller set and
came home to check the internet. Oh. It'll be released on May 29, and it
costs $100. So now he's wanting it for his birthday this summer! That's a
little out of his range.

But in the several hours of driving around looking for this set, we had
great conversations about Marco Polo and Kublai Kahn. Tim brought a book
home from the library on Marco Polo a couple weeks ago, and we read it
together. It's been chaotic here lately, so I never really asked why he was
interested in Marco Polo. (Tim goes to the library at the military school
once a week; I don't go, so I often miss his reasoning in wanting a
particular book.)

Turns out Marco Polo's adventures are the whole point of this most recent
lego series called Orient Adventures. He's been reading all about them in
lego magazine, wanted more information, and found it. Now he wanted the
legos so he could really play the stuff that comes out of the books. He
also announced he needed a bigger lego space, which involved room
rearranging, and he cleaned up his room to facilitate that.

I feel like shouting from the rooftops that unschooling really works! to
everybody who's ever told me it won't work, he'll never learn to follow
through on things, do research, etc. But so many people would never see
this, because it looks just like play. It's "just legos". Wrong!

Happy, calm, relaxed week.
brenda