two boys, storytelling & child-led learning
Unfortunately, the newspaper can’t use my column this week, so I thought I’d share some photos today instead. Some of you might be interested in knowing that the flower I use in my logo is a kind of Columbine. I discovered it in a wildflower seed mix, and I try to collect the seeds every year and replant them. Last year none of them bloomed, but this year I have a few, and they are so pretty.
…this picture. A warm February Sunday spent with sticks alongside a lake. Georgia red clay underfoot. It was a good day.
This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on May 23, 2012. To see a slideshow of photos I took while visiting Amelia Island, click here to go to my photography blog.
In May I had the pleasure of going on vacation to Amelia Island, Florida with my favorite three boys and in-laws. Amelia Island is located in northeast Florida just below Cumberland Island and the Georgia border. It has 13 miles of beaches, lots of attractions, and all the amenities that we’re used to at home, but I’m afraid I can’t speak about many of those because we spent almost all our time on the beach!
We were lucky enough to be able to walk from our accommodation to the beach. I have always been a mountain person, but after visiting the ocean with my boys, I have found a second love at the ocean. What I especially loved about Amelia Island was how quiet it was on the beach. There were very few other people, though I have a feeling part of the reason for that was going in early May. I also noticed that on Saturday there were quite a few more people.
Mid-day was hot and the tide was in, so there was less beach, but in the evening around six o’clock, the tide was low. The beach was wide and full of tidal pools. This is what my boys loved the most – they are still a little wary of going into the ocean waves.
My five-year-old explored the tidal pools and searched for all the treasures to be had there. We saw three large horseshoe crabs – only one was still alive. My son was delighted to find a beautiful purple and orange starfish, and we also found little fish and several kinds of crabs, including hermit crabs. We took pictures of everything we couldn’t keep.
My two-year-old loved sitting in the sand, digging with a small shovel and tossing the sand as far as it could go – something he’s not allowed to do with the dirt in our yard. He also liked for me to pick him up and swing him over the ocean waves. I don’t think I’ll ever forget his laughter and expression of pure joy.
The highlights of our beach combing were daddy’s mission to find shark teeth, and together we found over 10 teeth. And on our last day, my five-year-old and I took a long trek down the beach in search of a leatherback sea turtle’s nest, and though I feared my son might crash on such a long walk, we accomplished our mission, saw the protected nest, and made it back.
We explored the quaint downtown area of Fernandina Beach. According to the Nassau County’s visitor’s guide, it’s the birthplace of the modern shrimping industry, and the 50-block downtown district is on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Fernandina Beach is also the only place in the United States to have been under eight flags starting with the French occupation in 1564, Spanish occupation from 1565-1763, and the British occupation from 1763-1784.
Next came the Patriots flag in 1812. The Patriots consisted of 70 Georgians and 9 Floridians who tried to establish the “Territory of East Florida,” but President James Madison refused to acknowledge their claim. After this, the Green Cross Flag rose briefly in 1817 when American citizens desired the independence of Florida, but after only four months, they were forced to leave. The Mexican Revolutionary Flag was raised right after that, but U.S. troops occupied the island in December 1817 and held it “in trust for Spain.”
In 1821, Spain ceded Florida to the United States of America. From 1861-1862, the National Flag of the Confederacy was raised, but Federal troops regained the island on March 3, 1862 and stayed there for the rest of war.
If you want a place to get away and relax that offers plenty of sights, historical locations, and pristine beaches, I highly recommend Amelia Island. We had a vacation we’ll never forget, and I hope we can return someday.
To see a slideshow of photos I took while visiting Amelia Island, click here to go to my photography blog.
Note: This column was printed in the April 18, 2012 edition of the The Barrow Journal.
Sometimes it pays to have connections. At least, that’s what my boys thought when a friend of mine invited us over to meet her husband, a retired toymaker, and play with his handmade, wooden toys.
Jack Dohany worked in the electronics industry as a field engineer from 1962 to 1970, but after seeing the Vietnam War up close, he became a pacifist and eventually left his job. He met a craftswoman who took him to his first crafts fair, and he noticed that there weren’t many good toys there.
“I was looking for a way to support myself that was fun and peaceful, and it seemed like toymaking might be that way. It was.”
He ran his business from 1970 to 2009, and he called it The Merry Toymaker. It was located in his home or wherever he happened to be living, and he sold his toys chiefly at craft fairs. He did no advertising.
In California, there are huge craft fairs such as the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the spring, a fair in Northern California in the fall, and the Dickens Christmas Fair and the KPFA Crafts Fair in Berkeley in December.
After Jack and his wife, Winston Stephens, moved to Georgia in 2001, his business shrank because there are few good craft fairs here. So at that time he sold to stores, and The Idea Factory in New Orleans was his best outlet.
The first toy Mr. Dohany made was of a train engine, and he still owns it. (See photo below.) All of his toys were circus-oriented. He says his favorite is the two-hand top, but the circus train and squeeze acrobat come in close seconds. He has wonderful memories of entertaining children at the craft fairs.
“I’d spin a top on a plate, flip the top high in the air and then catch it still spinning on the plate. Then I’d put the plate on top of my head and do my silly toymaker dance while the top was still spinning. Kids (and their parents) loved it. One of my fondest memories is of a kid here in Georgia who managed to do this trick perfectly on his first try!”
My boys loved playing with the wooden toys. For me, these handmade toys are much more special than the plastic toys the boys receive for their birthdays with all the bells and whistles. I asked Mr. Dohany what he thought about that.
“Handmade wooden toys have some human warmth built into them which is lacking in factory-made toys,” he told me. “They also encourage the development of manual dexterity, and in my humble opinion, they are just more fun to play with than plastic toys are.”
If you want to buy one of Mr. Dohany’s toys, you’re out of luck because he retired in 2009. He gave his entire workshop to John Thomas who was one of his helpers in California and good friend. John stays home with his young children, and he’s planning to sell his toys over the Internet. When it’s complete, the website will be at http://www.merrytoymakers.com/.
Until then, Mr. Dohany likes to tell everyone, “I’m not the only toymaker in the world. If you Google handmade, wooden toys, you’ll find lots and lots.” He also added, “Next to meeting and marrying up with Winston Stephens, toymaking is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
To see more photos of Mr. Dohany and his toys, you can go to my photography blog by clicking here.
This column was originally printed in the October 26, 2011 edition of the Barrow Journal.
Happy Halloween and Turning Forty
When you’re a child, having a birthday on Halloween is a pretty cool thing. Besides cake and presents, you also get to dress up in a funny costume and go trick or treating. You get invited to parties, and though they aren’t for you, everyone pays you special attention.
When you’re an adult with children, having a birthday on Halloween is a pretty cool thing, but only because it’s easily forgotten.
My five-year-old is so excited that Halloween is coming. He decided several weeks ago that he wanted to be a ghost. Since I’m not a crafty person, we went to several stores the other day looking for a costume. Why are ghost costumes so hard to come by? Sure, we could just throw a sheet over his head, but I wanted something more creative.
We finally found a ghost costume his size, but it has a scary mask with it. He doesn’t want to wear the mask, but he’s happy with the rest of the costume. I tried talking him into wearing make-up or at least a white hat, but he doesn’t want that either. So, his costume may look a little incomplete, but he likes it, and that’s all that matters.
As for my two-year-old, I’m hoping he’ll be happy with the Peter Pan hand-me-down. Since it’s a non-frills costume (which we needed when the eldest was this age), I’m hoping it’ll work well for him too.
We’ve done a little decorating. “Little” is the key word. As I said, I’m not a crafty person, and decorations tend to stay subdued at my house. But we’re slowly adding on to them each year, and my son and I have made a bat and pumpkin out of construction paper. We strung some pumpkin lights in our activity room and a few paper ghosts on the front porch.
I’m happy to report that the small pumpkins my son grew this summer and harvested in August are still firm enough to sit on the porch without attracting flies. Unfortunately, his second crop of pumpkins is not going to be ready for the holiday. The plants are flowering right now, and I doubt they’ll survive the winter, but you never know in this unpredictable Georgia weather.
We still have to visit a pumpkin patch, attend a Halloween carnival, and read more Halloween books. But behind all this ghostly activity, I am aware that I will be reaching the summit and climbing “over the hill” on Halloween.
Once she reached the age of forty, my grandmother told everyone she was 39 for about 42 years…until the day she died. My mother takes a different approach. Sometimes she’ll tell people she’s older than she really is because she wants them to think she looks great for her age.
At least for now, I don’t mind telling people I’m forty. I think I’ve earned my age, and I’m looking forward to this next decade.
Perhaps some will argue with me (and I welcome that because I’m still learning on this journey), but I think by the time you are forty, finally you have a grasp of the myriad of emotions, possibilities and disappointments that life offers. You have probably lived enough to see or be touched by most of them.
At forty I know I’m extremely lucky. Though I have lived through heartache, disappointment, lonely times and humbling times, I have kept healthy, and I have not suffered severe tragedy. But I’ve watched disease and tragedy touch the lives of loved ones, so I know how easily it could happen to me. I try not to take my life for granted.
Not all my dreams have come true, and this still stings. But I hold onto this tiny card I found in the packaging of my one of my son’s toys: “You know what? Not all dreams come true. But that’s okay because you can always make new dreams.” It’s attributed to “Katie, age 4.”
It doesn’t surprise me that such wisdom comes from a four-year-old. I have gained more wisdom from rearing young children than I ever had in my previous, childless life. And the best perk of homeschooling is that I get to explore the world and learn along with them.
They have taught me that happiness is truly in the small details. It’s in the everyday routine and the little discoveries we make along the way. I think this is why I love photography too. It has given me a keen eye for small details, light and shadows. Everyday objects come alive in the right light.
If there’s anything I hope to instill in my boys as they grow older it is not to forget those feelings of wonder. I want them to hold onto their curiosity. The world begins to get darker as we grow older, but that doesn’t mean those small joys are gone.
So I’ll be sneaking candy, lighting jack-o-lanterns, and following my boys’ lead on my birthday. Hopefully there won’t be any trickery. Just smiles, giggles and treats.
Happy Halloween to all of you! May you receive lots of treats and no tricks this holiday.
I usually don’t share so many photos, but I can’t help myself. Recently I had the opportunity to take my boys to Edisto Island, South Carolina for a few days. I think vacations can be the best learning opportunities of all. This trip was no exception: from learning patience (the first day was stormy) to getting to touch real, live ocean animals. Anyone who follows my blog will know that my five-year-old has always been crazy about ocean animals, so this trip to the beach was extra exciting.
We’ve been to Edisto Island once before when he was one-year-old, but I’m so glad we got to go back now that he’s five. And it was my 2-year-old’s first trip the ocean too, so that was really exciting too! If you’d like to learn more about the island and our visit, please click over to my newspaper column at the Barrow Journal. Below I’m going to share some of our photos and discoveries. Thanks for taking a peek!
One lucky thing about the storm was all the shells and critters that were washed ashore! Above is a horseshoe crab. (It was not alive.)
We found so many shells.
The starfish were so cool.
The condo we stayed in overlooked a lagoon complete with an alligator (we only saw him once), beautiful white egrets, blue herons, fish, turtles and mosquitoes!
We also went to Charleston, South Carolina (my birthplace). Above is a photo at the Children’s Museum in Charleston. A wonderful, inexpensive place, if you visit Charleston with your kids.
We saw lots of boats on our trip too! (Since my father loved boating, I felt right at home.)
Where are some places that you have taken your children on vacation? What kinds of discoveries did you make?
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