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Yes, my youngest child actually said these things.
The kids and I come up with a new theme every summer, some sort of activity we do together, some book we read together, or some show we all watch. The first summer we did this, we spent every evening reading the Bone graphic novels. It was the first time I think I ever really enjoyed summer. The summer after that, we made pie every week and raised a lot of butterflies. The summer after that, last summer, we watched the anime series Chi’s Sweet Home every night before bed (and raised more butterflies). For this summer, we’re watching Star Trek, the original series, and doing lots of DIY projects, including some basic electronics projects like crystal radios and LED throwies.
The kids are enamored with Star Trek. Absolutely in love. We’ve been watching an episode a night, and we’re not even through the first season yet. I’m in love with it too. I’m glad to see that a show I watched as a kid has stood up so well to the test of time. STOS isn’t perfect, of course. There are still plenty of episodes where you can spot plot holes big enough to drive a bus through. But when the writing lags, the acting, the sets, the costumes, and the effects still manage to suck me in. I’m enjoying this as much as the kids, and Hubster’s even having a good time watching with us.
One thing that is obvious is that Star Trek is still thought provoking. After every episode, the girls both have questions to ask. Pixie’s philosophy question, (“Are we real, or just someone else’s dream?”) isn’t a fluke. We’ve been getting all kinds of questions like that from her. Meanwhile, Princess wants to know how the show was made. “Mom! How do they make the star ship fly around that planet like that?” “Mom! How do they do they make people disappear when they do the transporter?” “Mom! How did they make Spock’s ears pointy like that?!” It makes my heart go pitter-pat to have these discussions with my kids. What’s even better is that with today’s technology, we can make our own little movies. I spent one evening last week showing the girls how to make a “space ship” (made from an egg-carton Pixie painted up) sail across a scene (our very dark-colored carpet) like it was flying through outer space. All we needed, aside from the egg carton ship and the dark background, was a simple stop-motion animation app on my iPad. And then used iMove to put that together with another stop-motion scene of little toy people rushing out of a castle to greet them. Add a little music and voila! We had three seconds of a movie.
So that’s our summer fun. And I’m working hard to figure out how to extend that fun into the fall. It gets hard to do stuff like this during the school year. Homework and Girl Scouts and karate classes eat up so much time. I’m trying to work out a schedule that will let me plan our free time better so we can keep doing this. We’ll see if I can make it work. If I can, maybe I can extend that summer joy into the rest of the year.
