Aidan has been venturing further into the performing arts as of late. He loves the act of creation in the moment, the act of performance–from music, to theater, to song, to dance. In the four video clips of this post, you can see a little of everything. My personal favorite is his
tap dance rendition. He seems to have some raw talent there, but I suppose I am biased. (Note that this post has multiple pages with one video per page, so be sure to click the links at the bottom to move through all four pages.)
First we have Aidan with grandma’s guitar. He is drawn to strings and enjoys strumming but resists any thing that might resemble instruction (which is typical for him). He likes to place his fingers about the frets and strum–listening for variations in tone and vibration. Here we see him demonstrating his unique method of experimentation; a rare musical performance, as he is not nearly as comfortable with this form of expression as he is with other forms.
Click the links below for more of Aidan, acting, singing, and dancing.
See Aidan the puppeteer –>
Tags: art · performance · video
We had a our first Earth Scouts meeting Monday. What is Earth Scouts you ask? Well, I had no clue about it up until a few months ago. I never thought I would want Aidan in a scouting program (I guess
Earth Scouts inaugural meetingI just kept thinking of the paramilitary and homophobic scouting programs out there). But when someone from our homeschooling group introduced us to Earth Scouts I have to admit I was curious. I started reading more about it and I liked what I initially read–it seemed in line with topics that we believe are important to instill in Aidan. Then, after reading through the 300+ page facilitator’s handbook on the information and suggested activities I was excited to start. So, I became a co-facilitator of an Earth Scouts group.
Earth Scouts works to empower kids by having them work together and try to make differences in their communities and in the world. It focuses on five broad topics/principles (respecting nature, 
The Earth boardpeace & nonviolence, economic justice, human rights, and participatory democracy). The idea behind it is that you provide different activities for the kids to introduce topics and to help inspire them, to provide greater understanding on these topics, to allow for them to demonstrate what they have learned, and then to provide opportunities for them to put the principles into practice.
I have to admit I was a little nervous about our first meeting and how well it would go. Not nervous so much in what we wanted to do but more with the size of our group. We have 21 kids participating in our Earth Scouts group. The facilitator’s handbook recommends no more than 10! In addition to having double the suggested number I was a little worried about how everything would play out since some of our regular homeschool meetings have seemed, in my mind, a little chaotic and noisy. But, everything 
Aidan and mini-Aidanwent well. It probably helped that a few of the younger kids who typically come to the regular meetings were not at Earth Scouts, and also that a number of the parents who typically sit off at the tables talking during our regular meetings were more engaged with their kids and our activities. The activities all seemed to flow nicely and the kids really seemed engaged and excited to be part of this. For this first meeting one of the main activities was that all the kids made a “person” to represent themselves which they will place around our earth board at each meeting. The final result of this was pretty cool!
Tags: earth scouts · photos · service-learning
It is our hope to engage in more volunteer and service-learning activities with Aidan (for his sake and our own). So today, we sought such an opportunity through the “
Feed My Starving Children” organization located in Aurora, IL. It was a wonderful experience.
• 2 hours
• 49 volunteers
• 50 boxes of food
• 10,800 meals
• 30 kids fed for a year
Together with a team of 49 volunteers, we prepared a specially designed food mixture of a vegetarian chicken flavoring including vitamins and minerals, dehydrated vegetables, soy nuggets, and rice. This mixture is designed specifically for children who are starving to death. We worked together at stations to bag this food into 400g bags, which we then heat sealed, labeled, and packed into cardboard boxes for shipping. In two hours time we packed 50 boxes each containing 36 bags of food. (Each bag is enough for 6 meals.) In two hours, we packed 10,800 meals which can provide one meal a day for 30 children over the course of a year. Not bad for a couple hours of work on Monday afternoon. Aidan loved the work. FMSC is one of the few places it seems in the area that welcomes the help of even small children. I suppose there is something special about children feeding children. We are definitely going back–hopefully with even more helping hands.
Tags: service-learning · volunteering
