sketching to learn

My boy is all about drawing these days. Every morning, every evening, while I make lunch, in the car, on the docks, pencils and some sketch book or another are always in hand.

Of course his latest proclamation is that he would like to be a marine architect and many, many of his drawings are of every type of ship imaginable or imagined (Evan, you will be hearing more from him on this!)
Second to things that float are observations in nature.

He's found his own way of absorbing the world around him, making it his own, creating a memory.

Times like this are so important for me as mama-teacher, reminding me to step back and let him create his own "curriculum" (a word that comes up more often than I care to think lately now that he's entering "1st grade"). I am so often humbled and awe struck by how he chooses to "study" certain things and how he commits to them in his own way.

All the while chatting away, talking to himself, or the plants, or the pencils, or to the universe... asking questions, making up songs, pondering the imponderables, inventing dialogue, disappearing in his work. And my job is not to correct is spelling or point out the scientific aspects of the plants, or suggest he draw bugs next or get him to measure them to practice his numbers... it's just to sit and observe and learn from my favorite little teacher.

(I love the skull & cross bones - x with circle- in this one, showing that pokeweed is poinsonous. Something we learned last year when we almost mistook it for elderberry!)