Steven Globe-trots (at least in books)

Geography: A Literature Approach is something I've had around here for quite a few years. Linda, my sis, used this w/Kevin and recommended I keep it for Lea when the time came. Well, the time came, but Lee-lee was in school by then.

I decided to keep it in case I knew of someone who might want to use it someday. I didn't think it would be something Steven would want to work with, and last year, he didn't; but this year, he does.

It's so interesting how people change and develop over time to become more adapted to certain experiences, particularly children. Well, no, that's not true. It's everyone. I notice it in myself as well. For example, I'll read a book one year and get something out of it, and then read it another year and the understanding of the book is the same, but also different; so the original feeling about it is as it was the first time, but my consciousness holds it in a new way, a new dimension of it opens and the experience of it has deepened.

Can Steven know that is what is happening to him? I don't know. I don't think it matters. It's much more interesting just to watch him absorb himself in the experience of a new awareness, and to see his eyes light with understanding because a thing, whatever it is, has just been revealed to him simply because he is ready now.

The first book to be read along with the course is called Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling. It's about a boy who lives on the northernmost part of Lake Superior who one winter finds a piece of cedar and out of it carves a man in a canoe. In the Spring, the boy releases the little boat he's named "Paddle to the Sea" and on the bottom he's also etched,"Please put me back in the water." So, Paddle to the Sea is set free to follow the flow of the Great Lakes, with minimal interruption, all the way to the St. Lawrence Seaway, to eventually be found by a lighthouse keeper on the shores of Newfoundland.

I was excited today when we found this little film online:

Paddle to the Sea

And we watched it together in the quiet house before Lea and Nicholas came home.