Pinochet, Britney and Muhammad Ali: Pom Poms on Tender Hooks

Pom Poms are so therapeutic and educational. Boy wanted to make some little Pom Pom’s as Christmas decorations but he couldn’t remember how to make them. It ended up being a cool learning exercise in art and craft and general knowledge for the two of us to do.

Boy chose his size of circle to make the cardboard Pom Pom frame. Although we were not doing a home schooling exercise, watching him measure plates, cups and bottles (anything with a circle he could draw around) against each other as he found his perfect size was just amazing.

The second step was to find a somewhat smaller circle to make the inside circle for the cardboard frame. The circle hunt repeated itself and my kitchen benches again supported an assortment of anything with a circle base on it. This second circle-finding mission reinforced his first rules of highly scientific circle measurement of holding one kitchen piece up against another. Scientific or not, it worked well.

After carefully tracing his circles onto an empty cereal box, he then cut them out and sought out the wool. He knew exactly what colours he wanted (how Aspergers is that!) and he told me a long story about why a recent home school worksheet we did on the colour blue was dumb, stupid, and damaging to kids. There would be no blue in his Pom Pom, his Pom Poms would be like Muhammad Ali, a yellow and black bee (can you guess who the latest obsession is?). Oh dear: no yellow wool so he went for his favorite colour, green, and told me how to blend blue and yellow to get green.

So, we sat, threaded, talked, laughed and had a wonderful time exchanging tidbits of general information. Boy now knows a little of the history of Chile under the Pinochet regime, about Britney Spears break up and where the saying on "Tender Hooks" (tenter hooks) comes from.

I LOVE the ease of using Natural Learning elements for home schooling. Oh yes, the Pom Poms are pretty cool too.