When Homeschoolers Play

My kids play with all kinds of kids, friends from church, sports, the neighborhood and our homeschool cooperative. They play similar things with all kinds of kids but I have noticed a certain tendancy with other homeschool kids to choose some unusual activities or games when they are together.

Today we had two lovely kids over from our homeschool support group, a boy and a girl slightly older than our kids and the five kids played very well together, mostly as a group with a very little breaking off into smaller pairs at times. It is beautiful outside and they have spent nearly the entire afternoon/early evening outside together enjoying the weather and each other.

They spent around two hours today inside our pine tree. Serona cut out some branches so they have a little fort and easy branches to climb inside it. They just camped out in there and were playing. Well I thought they were playing house or just climbing the tree. In reality what they were doing is picking pine sap off the tree for about two hours. Their hope was to make pine syrup.

After two hours of hard work they brought it inside to me and asked if I could boil it down into a snack. It was hard on my heart to explain to them it was not maple sap and it could not make what they thought it could. I googled pine sap to try tp find a use for it and promised them next spring we could tap sugar maples and boil down sap for real. They took it in good spirits but I could see they were disappointed. Serona came up with the idea that we could boil it in some water as an air freshner so their work was not all lost. This seemed to make them happy atleast.

They are now in the backyard filling socks with rocks and really enjoying themselves. Neither of these activities would have flown with some of their other friends but these kids are just peas in a pod today and it is nice to see them all enjoying themselves.

By the way if you need to remove pine sap from children's skin, Goo Gone works wonders. A good friend of mine suggested it and it worked really well. Just pour some on, scrub gently with a washcloth and wash it off quickly and it all comes immediately off.

I heard on the radio today that it is National Take a Walk After Dinner night - are you going to participate? I can't confirm it but it sounds fun and like a good idea if your weather is nice.

Peace,
Tenniel