Toddler Tuesday: Shadow Dancing

We aren't unschoolers. Well, technically maybe we are because Lucy is only 19 months old and we aren't actually homeschoolers yet. But if we were, we wouldn't be unschoolers. Follow?

The whole point of that non-quite-sensical paragraph above is that while that is not the style of teaching I feel comfortable with, some of the points that I've heard unschoolers make, but didn't quite understand, are suddenly making more sense to me. As I watch Lucy learn and grow and start making connections, I am amazed at what she is picking up. Not just the "normal" stuff I was expecting, like her colors and big/little and their relativity, although when you stop to think about it, those are impressive too, but those things I wouldn't have even thought to "teach" her.

Right now, she loves shadows. She received a shadow nursery rhyme book for her birthday but just recently figured out how it works. Now she is obsessed with light and dark and finding shadows, reflections and rainbows. Anytime she sees a little light on the wall, she has to find me and show me.

Last week we had a nice day so I attempted to take my non-flashing camera outside so I would at least have a few pictures of her this month. It didn't really work that well because she was being pensive

(yes, it looks like she is sad but really that is her thinking face)

  but if I asked her to smile, she would make a weird smirky face. But it was still a fun time and just in that hour or so, she learned so much. At first she was just playing with them or as my science-loving self would like to say, she was experimenting.

She could run and they would run, 

she could make baby dance and baby's shadow would dance,

 and if she had baby lay down, her shadow got little.

So of course, she had to try that with herself. 

 Then she realized if she turned around, they didn't. Then she saw the Sun and was telling me how it was a light. She already knew that her shadow book only works when we use the  flashlight shining and then she started signing about light and dark and she started babbling. I'm not sure all of what she was trying to tell me but she it was obviously really important. While she is telling me all of this, I'm just nodding while thinking "My kid is a genius" but really, it isn't just my child. The human brain is amazing and a child's ability to understand concepts is literally breathtaking at moments. I love doing little projects with Lucy and planning trays for her, thinking up new ways to teach her things but this was a great reminder that at the end of the day, she is the one teaching herself because to a child, the world is a fascinating place.