Everything is cyclical and we have been taking a natural rest lately. Of course lots of things have been going on- swimming, spending time with school friends who are more free in the summer, the local fair, riding bikes, eating berries from the vine, finding shapes in the clouds and all of the many other things that can be summed up as summer. I see small lessons happening with these things all the time but its not really anything to write about- it is so easy and natural that I often have a fleeting thought of, "Oh look, she just figured out how to..." but then its gone and I sit down to write without any clear picture of what we've done lately. Until today. Today I definately have a pretty cool story to share...

Lately Jace has been loving his skateboard and all things skateboard related. He's been playing skating video games, designing his own skating video games and watching fingerboard skaters on youtube (finger boards are those mini skateboards that only use fingers to "ride"- you may have seen people doing elaborate tricks with them on tv). But, as it usually happens, after several days of this he started to get bored with just watching these things on a screen. He couldn't find any of his finger boards and had no money to buy more so he improvised and made himself one out of cardboard. He was using game boxes, dvd cases, bowls, etc. to set up mini skate parks in the living room.

Eventually that wasn't enough so he built a skatepark with construction paper, cardboard and paperclips. Then the cardboard skateboard started wearing out from overuse.


He asked his dad for help and they came up with a plastic fingerboard that Jace calls a "futureboard" because it doesn't have wheels. Of course this plastic futureboard is heavier than its cardboard counterpart and didn't really work well with the paper skatepark. No problem... Jace drew up plans for a wooden park, complete with dimensions for size.


He and his dad worked together building and perfecting this mini skatepark most of the day. Now he has a really cool toy made from scrap lumber and he stretched his creative muscles (which is a HIGH educational priority in our family).


Best of all he got a great memory of an afternoon spent with his dad doing something important to him.