Cactus Wren Park

Tuesdays are our days with the Henderson Homeschoolers, as I think I have previously mentioned. Anyway, today we were at Cactus Wren Park. Apparently, there are myriad parks in Vegas built by housing developers adjacent to their cookie cutter neighborhoods. Wouldn't necessarily want to live in one, but they do have playgrounds.

Today was Mardi Gras, I assume, because we had Mardi Gras crafts. The kids were given masks to color with markers. The adults were given 3D masks to paint. Personally, I thought the kids should be able to paint the masks too, but I can understand to a certain extent the aversion to paint mess. Kristina also brought crowns. If you want to see pictures of our finished masks, leave a comment.

After Zorah and I were done with our crafts, she called me over to her for help with these monkey bar type things on the playground. She was afraid to fall off and wanted me to spot her. When she hung from them, she really wasn't that far from the ground. So I told her to drop, but that I would catch her so she could fall slowly, just to see how far it was. After doing that three times, she realized that she has jumped from much higher places and dropped down by herself.

Then she tried to make it to the next ring, got stuck, and dropped.

Then she tried to make it to the next ring again, succeeded, etc.

Part of my thing is trying to avoid putting any pressure on a child to succeed or to behave a certain way, but sometimes I can't help it, whether positive or negative. We live and learn. I think that as long as praise or criticism is genuine and specific, it is valuable, though you have to make sure there is a balance between the two. I couldn't help being proud of her and letting her know so. And she is so damned cute. When she says: "That was so breathtaking! I did not believe I could even do that!" Seriously.