Surprising beauty

Why travel to an art museum when a bus stop can do this? But it won't do it all day, or every day. Light, projections, shadows, are fleeting, and people aren't always there to see them. Art museums are good, but art is unfolding all around us.

SandraDodd.com/surprise
photo by Elaine Cambridge

Memories and peace

Sometimes a peaceful time is still confusing and noisy. Experiences and perceptions differ, and your memory might not match your child's about one thing or another. Something one found stressful might be a memory of joy for another. Do your best to find the peace and joy.

Charlie eats an apple
A Loud Peaceful Home
photo by Sarah Dickinson

A fun, new song

The separation of learning and fun is the only thing that keeps learning from BEING fun.

Perhaps this will be seen as preaching to the choir, but I prefer to think of it as teaching a new song to an experienced, enthusiastic choir.

Living becomes learning
photo by Holly Dodd

Patterns and games

Many games involve patterns of colors or numbers. Think of that, even when you play games like Rummy or Poker. Tile games and matching games are easy to see. Many single-player games with cards or moving pieces on a grid to let all the cars move, or match-three games, are all about seeing patterns, one step at a time.

Having read that far, I hope you thought of one or all of these, too:

Music
Mathematics
Art

Patterns galore. Play with them.

Seeing patterns
photo by Sandra Dodd, of some old-style cards
in the barracks at Fort Stanton, now a museum

The air is sweet

Sometimes the air is sweet. A change in the temperature, time outside after much inside, being in a more rural place than usual, new rain—these things, and others, can make air seem especially rich and good. Being open to noticing the air can make life rich and good.

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Jo Isaac

In the old days...

Sometimes when I see something unusual, rare, or notice something from a special angle, I think of how important an ability to draw was before there were cameras. Someone who didn't have a chance to draw, or couldn't draw from memory, wouldn't be able to share with others except with words. I like words, but I wouldn't be able to describe these chimneys, which I got to see from the roof of East Barsham Manor, in Norfolk.

Weird that I saw them.
Nice that I had a camera.
The builders had no idea, in 1620, that a camera would ever come along.

Abundant Beauty
photo by Sandra Dodd

Something changes everything

"I'd never heard a baby's first laugh. Hearing the sound of that laugh and seeing the joy in my boy's being opened up my whole world at that moment. I remember the room getting brighter, lighter, softer." —Karen James

You will want to read the rest, I think:SandraDodd.com/karenjames/#ethan
photo by Karen James