Just a quick update to record Seth’s current interests:
Canada. This one stemmed directly from Raffi, Seth’s favorite musician, given that he lives on Mayne Island, BC. We’re going to try to visit Vancouver this summer, both because Seth has never been, and ever since I brought up the possibility, I can’t stop thinking about La Casa Gelato, which has at least 218 flavors on site at all times.
dueting with Raffi
Other countries in general. Seth will usually just bring it up with, “Tell me about other countries.” This also probably stemmed from Raffi, with his wonderful song, ‘Like Me and You.’ I love that Seth is interested in this, but while I can’t speak for Todd, my responses feel lame. I often pick a country whose food I can talk about, but I would love to be able to tell him more about any given country’s geography and culture. We have been getting some great books at the library with photos of kids and people around the world, though: Ann Morris‘s books and One World, One Day, among others.
Garbage trucks. Seth has always been pretty interested in vehicles, but he has a sudden love of garbage (and recycling and compost) trucks. He plays with his recycling and garbage trucks, and also pretends that our couch is a garbage truck, using his various musical instruments as “controls.” (I am so impressed with how he thought of sticking a bunch of kazoos, chopsticks, maracas, etc, in the couch crack to look like a bunch of levers.) We have also spent a few early mornings in the backyard, waving to the drivers and watching the automatic side loaders at work.
using a jackhammer on his garbage truck (the fallen willow tree in Grandma & Grandpa’s backyard)
Volcanoes. This is the most recent interest, which came about from a lot of coincidences. Within the past week, we went on a hike next to the White River gorge (a river that runs off of Mt Rainier), got Seth his first bottle of bubble bath, and checked out O is for Orca from the library (which has photos of both the White River, and Mt St Helens). So now he’s been having a bubble bath every day, in which he uses a funnel to act as a volcano shooting bubble lava up in the air. The couch cushions are turned into a volcano, and he’s the lava bursting out. Today we got a few volcano books, and we spent a happy afternoon making a vinegar & baking soda volcano erupt — nearly every eruption Seth laughed like crazy and shouted “St Helens! St Helens!” We’ll see how long this interest lasts, but it also has me thinking that we should go down to Mt St Helens this summer, too.
Deserving of honorable mention: Spanish, roadrunners, tidepools…
