(I wrote this post several weeks ago but I was waiting to get a photo of their shelter-between-the-rocks. I am never going to get that photo. I need a new phone with a camera. I’m helpless. So I’m posting this anyway.)
It’s a classic book. Award winning. I did not love it. Still, it was enjoyable. And it’s in our survival genre. The kids were excited to finish it so we could watch the movie, which we happened to find on Netflix. We finished on Wednesday and watched the movie together on Friday night.
First of all, it was an old movie. The kids haven’t even really seen any moves from the 1990s, so watching one from 1964 was a really different experience. Kelvinator was totally disturbed by the way people talked.
Then they had changed the movie so much. SO MUCH! All the kids were outraged. And I have to admit that the end had nothing to do at all with how the book ended. In fact, the movie ended only half way through the book and the ending was so abrupt and was something that never happened in the book, I was outraged, too.
The best thing about reading My Side of the Mountain was that the little kids have been enjoying playing at the “sand dunes” lately. The sand dunes is really just an undeveloped field a few blocks away from our house. It’s “wild” in the way things can be wild in suburbia. There is lots of brush and natural vegetation and rocks. No trees. Anyway, I have loved that the kids have been going outside to play now that we have some reasonable weather.
But the thing I love the most is that they are using the natural resources around them to build a shelter between some rocks. They are trying out skills that we have read about in our books and watched on youtube. When they have free days, they ask me to pack them some food and plan on being gone over there for most of the day.
I love it. Part of me thinks I should be there helping them out. But the lazy part of me thinks how good it is for kids to have unsupervised time to play and build and think things through on their own. Be creative without me or anyone else telling them that idea won’t work or here’s a better idea. I like them to just learn by doing.
I have taken lots of splinters out lately.
sparkling blue 