Tag Archives: chalk

on getting sent back to first grade.

on getting sent back to first grade. I.

after the fire at organic valley headquarters, we’re still figuring out where the displaced folks are going to end up for an extended period of time. for a short period of time some of us ended up in odin’s waldorf school, which also used to be a the public school so it has the “feel” of both worlds. in some ways, it feels just like a school i might have gone to when i was a was a kid. and in other ways it feels like a waldorf school. they sure know how to put a chalkboard to good use!

on getting sent back to first grade. II.

yes, i’ve literally been sent to first grade room. odin never tires of saying, “ok bye! have fun in first grade!” when i leave the house in the morning. all things considered, it’s not bad at all expecially considering it’s only a half a block from my house. and, on occasion, i get to sit in the hallway on linoleum floors and almost feel like i could be back in grade school while listening to listening to violin practice.

on getting sent back to first grade. III.

but it’s only temporary, they have to get the school ready for the kids coming back in the fall and we have to find more appropriate digs while the headquarters gets rebuilt.

odin’s interpretation of “Here Comes Science” in chalk.

odin's interpretation of "Here Comes Science" in chalk.

after years of having they might be giants’ “NO!” on heavy rotation ( some maybe recall day 1854: training for the robot parade ), i decided the time was right to introduce odin to “here comes the science” on a recent roadtrip.

perhaps unsuprisingly, it’s his new Most Favorite Music and their witty explorations of topics as diverse as circulation, photosynthesis, speed and velocity, and states of matter has raised many, many great questions ( some of which i don’t know the answer to! ) including how many 20 pound weights would you have to stack on top of a hunk of charcoal to make a diamond.

one morning he worked away at his easel with chalk and excitedly showed us his interpretation of “What Is A Shooting Star?” and “Why Does The Sun Shine”.

he reminded me, “poppi, you know the sun is a mass of incandescent gas about 93 million miles away. that’s why it looks so small, even though you can fit a million earths inside.”

he explained that the flaming bursts are solar flares which are different than the dark hunk of a meteor on the bottom of the chalkboard which, of course, could turn into a shooting star which is not a star at all, it’s a meteor that’s headed for a fall!

day 2533: Odin The Cosmologist.

day 2533: Odin The Cosmologist.

he’s rapidly approaching his seventh birthday?! and odin appears to be Thinking Big Thoughts. the other day he cornered me with a question about the smallest number ( which prompted much discussion in various places in The Real and Virtual Worlds regarding The Correct Answer, including consultation with a university of chicago physicist ).

today, he approached me and said simply, “poppi, you should go upstairs and look. i just drew The Universe on my chalkboard.” as it happens Odin’s Universe is a beautifully chalk-rendered earth with oceans shrouded in clouds and a bit of green land ( that doesn’t come through on the photograph ) and surrounded by stars. it instantly reminded me of carl sagan’s “pale blue dot”. if you haven’t listened to him read from the book, you should go do it now. i’ll wait 🙂

of course, we adults “know” The Universe is bigger than the earth, but he’s off to pretty good start at attempting to conceptualize The Bigness and Beyondness of it which is pretty fascinating when you consider that his schooling has consisted not of memorization and recitation but of playing in trees and singing songs and that he has almost no contact with Media. and that the books we read were mostly written over a century ago ( e.g. “wind in the willows”, “adventures of huck finn etc ).

i truly have no idea where he picks up concepts of negative infinity and space and cloud shrouded earth ( in fact, when i asked him if he’d ever seen a picture of earth from space he said, “no.” ). is he secretly handing out with carl’s ghost?

regardless, i’ll blow him mind some day when we watch the “powers of ten” video.