exploration | If By Yes

Tags

babies, child development, experimentation, exploration, learning, parenting, play, research, science, toddlers, videos

Alison Gropnik of The Scientist In The Crib claims that babies, especially toddlers, are like little scientists who constantly experiment with the way the world works. That’s why they’re always dropping spoons, smearing things on the wall, trying to provoke you with bad behavior and so on.

I took this video of Owl interacting with a new toy that I picked up at a swap meet. In under 5 minutes, I counted 14 separate scientific experiments, all unique, although some were repeats of previous experiments but with a new variable being introduced. It’s adorable and fascinating all at once. If you have a few minutes, check it out:

[vimeo vimeo.com/41460908]

If any of you have kids, I’d love to see 5 minute videos of their play. How many experiments can you spot? Post them on your blog, or in the comments here, and encourage others to do the same. Let’s observe the scientists at work!

Tags

back roads, British Columbia, crazy exploits, driving, exploration, Google Earth, Google maps, logging roads, Mission, mountains, Pemberton, Sasquatch trail, toyota, travel

Perfect Husband likes to explore.

I never knew this about him when we lived on the East Coast, but it turns out that’s because he’d already explored the East Coast pretty well. But in B.C., there are lots of funny little roads that take you out of the city and into the mountains, and within minutes BAM! You’re in totally foreign territory.

So he sits at home and looks at Google Maps and finds roads he doesn’t recognize, and then he piles us into the car and we explore it.

We’ve found some cool stuff this way, like a little air field for toy r.c. airplanes. PH likes to revisit that road a lot. He likes planes.

Well, this week PH had some time off for Easter and I let him persuade me into trying the Exploration of all Explorations.

The Sasquatch Trail.

Now, there’s really only one way to get from Vancouver to places in the mountains like Whistler and Pemberton. You go along the Sea to Sky highway. Where sometimes rocks fall.

The last time rocks fell, there was a lot of talk about what to do if this happened during the Olympics. If the only road was closed due to tumbling mountains, how would people get to the ski slopes where, you know, the snow is?

They started talking about a series of logging roads, which they called the Sasquatch trail. Supposedly you can get to Pemberton by following this route.

PH decided that he needed to try this. Go out to Mission, drive the Sasquatch trail, have dinner in Pemberton or Whistler, and come home on the Sea to Sky.

The problem is, the “Sasquatch Trail” seems to be more a hypothetical than a reality. Google Maps can’t give you directions along it. Some of the roads don’t even have names. In fact, Google Maps says some of the roads don’t even connect, but PH looked at the satellite images and decided that they were lying.

So we bought a lot of snacks, some water, and packed 24 hours worth of cloth diapers in the diaper bag, and we headed out for an adventure.

“You sure you don’t mind doing this?” my husband asked me, in the same voice that I might ask “are you sure you don’t mind me eating the last brownie?”

“I trust you,” I said.

“You sure?”

“I just don’t want to fall off a mountain. Don’t let us fall off the mountain,” I said.

“Don’t worry – the whole plan is to hug Harrison Lake. Look – we’ll be right along the water most of the way. We can’t possibly fall off anything.”

Ha.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

Mental note: Next time, get PH to use Google Earth instead of Google Maps, and check on the elevation.

The drive out past Mission was fine and normal. Then we hit the dirt-and-rock-and-pothole logging road, and it started to look like this: