Awhile back, we watched a TED video called Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do.  The speaker, Gever Tulley, sold us on the merits of giving our children freedom to learn and explore, control and manipulate, and understand and interact with the world around them… by letting them do things we might see as “dangerous”.  Like whittling wood with a knife, playing with fire, throwing things, deconstructing appliances, driving a car, and more.  So we recently bought Tulley’s book, Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do, which includes many more interesting activities.  We just got the book in the mail, and all of us are excited to try some of the ideas.

Cedar and Matt made a simple slingshot today (this idea is in the book, although Cedar thought it up by himself without the book’s prompting), but Cedar felt a little nervous about using it.  He’s got lots of time ahead in his life to learn about slingshots, and I’m sure he will.

We also brainstormed together about our own ideas of dangerous things we can do, and now my simple brain won’t remember any of them but one (next time we we’ll jot them down!).  The idea was “Running Outside Barefoot in the Cold”, and off went Cedar and Matt to run a couple of laps around the house.

This weekend we might head to the thrift store to buy an appliance to deconstruct.  Interesting times are ahead for us!