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Parenting is full of all kinds of days. Today, it’s a lazy Sunday. We stayed up way late last night and woke up wayyyy late this afternoon. We missed a birthday party Kay was invited to and were just relaxing. Only a few errands to run later this evening so a no stress, chill kind of day. Kay settled in with her tablet as I was browsing through ideas, information on making the blog better and jotting down some ideas for Kay to look over for videos for her YouTube channel. Sometimes these days just slip away into nothingness and that always bugs me some. I wonder if I could or should have made them…better? With all the commotion of regular days that are filled with Homeschool, errands, household chores and day to day “stuff”, I have come to let the second-guessing go and accept that those days feel great and are necessary sometimes.
I know that every day doesn’t have to be chock full of “special” as long as when opportunities do present, that I make sure to make even the littlest things count. Making the little things count can be as simple as helping Kay with right and left, inviting her to help make her breakfast with me or, like today, explaining the wonders of the colors of gum.
Kay was sitting with her tablet checking out Minecraft videos when out of the blue she asked; “Dad…why does gum always turn to white or gray? Where does the color go when you start chewing it?” I LOVE when she asks a question that can be turned into a teaching moment. Being a big kid at heart, it’s even better when that teaching moment can have a touch of science to it. Though I complain about how messy our house usually is, there are no better dad moments when the sleeves get rolled up and things can get messy. It’s also cool when the teaching is something that can be seen, manipulated and scaled up dad style!
I see it in her eyes when I “jump” to do something in response to one of her questions or ideas. Not all of them are the “jump” up kind, so when she gets one of these, it really lights her up…which of course, lights me up too. It’s like that whole smile thing. It’s contagious. I think every dad knows this look and we love it. “C’mon in the kitchen I said” as I headed there to get some…supplies. We gathered the bag of multi-colored gumballs we had recently bought, a Tupperware bowl and some water. We brought everything to the dining room/craft table (it is truly dual purpose). I had her pick out 4 gumballs of different colors and first try to see if the color would come off just rubbing the outside. I took two and she the other two. Minimal, if any, of the coloring came off. I had her take her two and drop them in the water. She dropped them in and after only a few seconds looked up at me like, “Hmmm…is something supposed to happen?” I told her to relax and watch for a minute. About 15 seconds later her eyes grew big as small bubbles began to appear on the outer surface of the gumballs. A full-blown smile as the coloring started to come off and color the water slightly.
“Put your two in Dad, I want to see what color it makes when they are all in there.” I added my two, a Purple and a Blue into the water. As the color started to bleed she looked up and I told her to go ahead and mix it. “Green…it turned green. Why does it come off?” I explained to her that the coloring on the outside of the gum is just that. Coloring. Just like food coloring that she used in other experiments we have done and that it didn’t have anything to do with the flavor. She was shocked by this revelation. Before today’s little experiment, she had insisted only on eating the yellow, white and blue ones thinking they were the “best” ones. She grabbed an orange one to test and sure enough, “This tastes the same as the white ones…and the blue ones!” Mission Accomplished. We learned a little something and had fun doing it. She was all smiles.
“I wonder what color the water would turn if we put a whole BUNCH of them in there???” Time to scale this up to Dad size. I nodded for her to fill the Tupperware up the rest of the way with water and grabbed the rest of the bag of gumballs. She poured them in and we took turns stirring them around to get the colors to mix. We ended again with a variation of green water and all white gumballs.
It was a little thing…one that I could have blurted out an answer to over my shoulder and went back to doing what I was doing and leaving her to her tablet for the rest of the night. Instead, we had an hour and a half of laughs, smiles and a dose of learning to boot. A win all the way ‘round. Every day doesn’t have to be special. Perfectly fine to have a laid back and easy day now and again. When the opportunity comes up to make a little thing count…Jump up. You and your child will be happy you did.
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This post was originally published on KKAndDad.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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