Sunday, February 23, 2014

A Pile of Blank White Paper and a Trip to McD's

Every night I leave a pile of blank white paper near colored Sharpies in Kaio's room.  And every morning I find fresh reflections of his latest musings.




I save them.   All of them.


I have a stack about two inches high of these drawings.


Sometimes I get him to narrate what's going on, and I transcribe onto the page.


The pictures usually portray scenes using characters from games and cartoons he likes.  Many times he creates mashups between two worlds, like turning Super Mario Brothers into Angry Birds, or making Angry Birds in a Minecraft world.  I see this ability to thread ideas from one realm with another as critical working skill that leads to incredible innovation.  For example the new Bowing Dreamliner was built inspired by the flight efficient albatross, which can soar great distances expanding very little energy.


I'm also impressed by his ability to change perspective of the subjects.  So he can draw them forward, sideways, upside down or from behind.  He's been able to do this for a while and I think it's a pretty advanced skill.


I deconstruct the drawings like a literary novel.  The use or lack of color, the white space, the movement, and the vehicles.  I love seeing these drawings every day.  They are my window into his mind, his obsessions.  And I'll probably save them forever.


This is what he made last night.  Nala told me in the morning that Kaio kept her awake playing McDonald's and making her food.  I'm peeved at how McD's has managed to infiltrate our lives.  Their happy meals have toys from the new Lego movie and the kids somehow know that through watching videos on youtube.  So today they begged me to stop at the M's on the side of the road and squeal with joy at the site of the big M.
A clash between my healthy all natural parenting side and my homeschooling side.  Healthy me wants nothing to do with Mc'D's but homeschooling me sees lots of opportunities for quality discussion.  I ended up taking them to McDonalds for Lego Movie happy meals and the kids were the happiest happy meal kids in the world.  Kaio planted four kisses on my lips and put on his seat belt without a fight.  We talked about why I don't like to eat there, about factory cows and pastured cows.  I don't think its a big deal to make trips like this once in a blue moon.  But In the end McDonald has won.  They have one more set of youth hooked on their child marketing machine.  I only hope they make smart decisions about how often to eat there when they are older.

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