3 Ginger Snaps

All the hype about Paris is real. 
Today is Monday and the vast majority of the museums, galleries and tourist haunts are closed – so we opted for parks and found a winner at the Palais du Luxembourg. 
The park has loads to offer in terms of beauty, people watching, and play spaces and the giant pond in front of the palace was the highlight of the day. Not because of the murky water and not because of the ugly fish – because of the sailboats!

We’ve had a lot of fun in Paris so far. We’ve eaten great food and viewed masterpieces… and the best 4€ I’ve spent so far was on this:

The boats are wooden and topped with a flag. The pile is bamboo and topped with a chunk of rubber that looks like the foot of a chair leg. The idea is you put your boat in the water, give it a push with the stick, hope it catches some wind, and run around to whichever spot on the other side of the pond that the wind and the ducks take the boat to.

In the world of summer camp, where my heart lies, there is a guy named Michael Brandwien who speaks at conferences all over the world about the best way that camp leaders can help children be successful at camp. He uses all kinds of acronyms that sound goofy and are full of meaning when you come to understand them. One of my favourites is FOTAY. It stands for “figure out the activity yourself” and it comes from a belief system that contends that too much of what children experience (video games, soccer practice, school worksheets) is so highly prescribed that there is no real room for problem solving and that this over programming betrays childrens’ capability and capacity for creativity and turns them into dolts. I agree with him. 

The best part of my day so far was watching Ruby figure out how the boat worked. Did it clunk in to the side a few times? For sure. Did she flail a little with the stick while trying to make contact with the boat? More than once. Did she need to be reminded that the stick was for pushing the boat and not poking the fish? Also more than once. But it didn’t take her long to develop some proficiency getting the boat oriented and into the wind using the stick. And it was truly a joy to observe her brain at work, grinding away at the right mathematical calculation and predicting where she should run to on the other side of the pond so that she could catch her vessel. 

Ruby is an IPad/Netflix/iBooks fiend. And I don’t see her giving any of those things up for wooden sailboats anytime soon. And for 30mins today, she was completely in her element with an older version of the selfie stick.