A Moral Tale and Extraordinary Connections

Evie and I sent to see a production of Pinnochio his morning. It was put on by the Enchantment Theatre Company. It was technically a wonderful production using masks and puppets as well as live actors. The set design and use was creative and clever. The story, holding closer to the original (as opposed to Disney-fied version) was an hard-hitting moral tale about how children must do whatever their parents tell them, they must go to school or they will be stupid and worthless and how "playing and eating and having fun all day" is simply not possible. Evie and I chose to leave right at the end but I would have been curious to hang out a little and get the reaction of the other homeschoolers we were with. The school-prep moralization of shows like Arthur Evie pretty much ignores. We never read a lot of the school-prep variety of picture books because we weren't interested in them. Evie said she enjoyed the production. I asked her why she thought the play had been written. She said "to scare kids." I don't know if we have somehow inoculated her against feeling odd or funny about homeschooling or if she figures she is in school, just not the same as others or what, she didn't seem much bothered by messages at all - interesting.

Later in the afternoon neighborhood friends came over to play. They worked on fixing up Evie's dollhouse. Why the sudden urge in doll housekeeping? A wonderful book called The Doll People. One of Evie's dolls was stuck under the dollhouse looking very much like the Wicked Witch of the West meeting her demise. That prompted the girls to produce a play of the Wizard of Oz. Evie has never seen the Wizard of Oz (just haven't gotten around to it). The other girls had. I was downstairs cooking dinner but could still catch snatches of the proceedings. Evie kept saying things like "But what about when . . ." or "Don't forget when such-and-such happens." They all came down to invite us to the performance and I asked Evie how she knew so much about the Wizard of Oz. "There's a whole episode about it from Carmen Sandiego: No Place Like Home. Besides, it is a popular theme in lots of books we've read." Wow! The connectiosn she makes (especially from Carmen) are amazing. It was a fabulous performance!

We had a "game night" evening and turned in early to read.

A day well lived!