Let me tell you a favorite story about my buddy, Rick Price. When the kids were young, the Prices and the Cantrells spent a weekend in two adjacent cottages at the Colorado State Forest. The cabins are primitive, and when we woke up Sunday morning, I had to break ice in our water supply. I hadn’t slept, the wood stove fought me, and desperate as I was for even a cup of instant hot chocolate, the thought of the miles between me and a cup of decent coffee had me in a mood.

A knock at the door and voilà! Here’s Rick, looking for all the world like Santa Claus in a lumberjack shirt, his beard already tinged with frost from the 30-second walk from his cabin, and in his hand, a fully charged Italian espresso caffettiera! Two minutes later, I’m pouring a shot of fresh espresso into my hot chocolate, the cabin is magically warming, Santa has gone on to other duties, and I’m feeling like it may be a good day after all.

Can any single experience enrich a child like travel? And how about travel to some of the world’s great cultural centers, with the kind of thoughtful anticipation and planning that rescued me that far-ago morning?

That’s the Prices’ company, ExperiencePlus! I wrote Rick to ask him how old a child needs to be to really profit from a trip with them. He says:

We’ve had families with teens tell us that our trip gave them the “best vacation"  they’d ever had, namely because we handled all the details, removing anyone in the family from the role of decision maker or authority figure.  Indeed, though, it is best for kids over 12.
 
Read about one family’s experience here.

How’s that for a spectacular holiday gift for your kids and your family? (And by the way, some great recipes on the site.)

I was praising Raven Maps. I would be grossly amiss not to mention Erwin Raisz. His hand-drawn maps are detailed almost beyond imagining. They seem to lie at the intersection of art and science. When I look at his Landform outline map of the United States with adjacent parts of Canada and Mexico, I feel that I see the skeleton of the nation explained – the essence of how we’re put together.

Raisz Landform Maps is maintained in good part as a memorial to an extraordinary man. The web site is worth a visit to read his story, and for the links.

Of course I picture you with Grow With the Flow always at your side, perhaps in a tooled leather pouch made to order for the book. If that’s so, check page 176 (it’s not online yet) for my paean to maps, which explains why I see them as one of the overarching tools for cognitive development.

Raven Maps are the most beautiful maps I’ve ever seen. (Apparently The Wall Street Journal agrees with me, although I can’t find their review.)

We have two of the maps, the US in color and Colorado, up in a back room at our offices – there was no wall left for them in the waiting room or halls, but once we’d seen them, Tom and I couldn’t bear to not show them to others. No child (and few parents) walks into that room without being drawn to them, and going for a bit of a journey.

Incidentally, if you check out the web samples, please believe me, even high resolution images can’t begin to capture the detail and print quality of the originals.

Completely Irrelevant Footnote

I wonder sometimes why it takes me 90 minutes to write a simple post like this one. Let me count the detours: I got to thinking about how the beauty of a map and its utility are one and the same. That led to Ode on a Grecian Urn (John Keats; “Beauty is truth…).

I wondered then who said that form follows function, and was surprised to discover it was
Louis Sullivan. (He actually said, “Form ever follows function.")

Wandering from that link, I discovered that Sullivan’s student, Frank Lloyd Wright had said it perfectly in relation to maps, and many other things:

“Form follows function’ — that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

When Andy was in junior high school, he built paper models. They started small – quick cut-outs from a local toy store. Then he discovered Paper Models International, ordered their catalog, and the hobby took off. My personal favorite is the 1 : 300 model of Cologne Cathedral, whose intricate, lacy towers took thousands of snips of the scissors, more careful folds than I can count, and infinite patience and perseverance. Of course I think there were many benefits: planning ability, a sense of the ordered parts of a whole, learning how to cognize the mathematical relations of complex structures, dexterity, and an ability to stay calm when the paper wasn’t doing what it should and the glue was drying. But, perhaps more important, I think the steady, quiet, absorbing activity gave Andy time to meditate, and to think about Life. It’s not difficult for me to imagine that his work now, building mathematical models of binary star systems, continues the same interest.

Lou Dausse, who owns PMI, guided Andy towards appropriate models, and discussed pros and cons of each new project. I talked to him preparing this post; he remembers Andy well. I didn’t think to thank him for the support he gave my son during those several years: Thanks Mr. Dausse, and perhaps Andy will still tackle that model of l’Institut de France.

Two caveats (the first of which is a thinly disguised sermon):

1. Most of the models in the PMI catalog are for adults, and some of them are prodigiously difficult, so check the skill level suggested. Oh yeah? Sez who? It’s important to start with doable models. But tackling a huge project, an impossible project, an adults-only project (even with a bit of adult help) – that’s great stuff for a child. And if it’s a little choppy here and there, and the final product doesn’t look exactly like RMS Titanic, just remember it didn’t float all that well either.

2. Paper Models International has such a variety of models that only the hardcopy catalog is complete, and their web site is a bit out of date, so if you find paper modeling intriguing, I’d suggest you order a copy of the catalog from

Paper Models International
9910 SW Bonnie Brae Drive
Beaverton
Oregon, 97008-6045

or by calling
503-646-4289

Mr Dausse hopes to have a current catalog online soon. Their home page will link to it when it’s available.

You can look at some of their products at this link, but I think the catalog is snazzier.

Andy writes this morning:

A fun online game, and a great example of how computer games can be educational. I think I may understand something about box orbits at last!

http://www.bigideafun.com/penguins/arcade/spaced_penguin/default.htm

Cheers!
A

If you’ve been obsessed in recent years by your failure to completely grasp box orbits, here’s an explanation for nonmathematicians. The second illustration amounts to a defnition.

On the other hand, if you like to keep track of what you don’t know about the analysis of box orbits in a triaxial galaxy, here’s a fine start.

If you’d like to look at the math of orbits, with some handsome diagrams, these are courtesy of Prof.dr. M. Franx of Leiden University.

For myself, I think I’ll just sling Kevin a few more times and get back to work.

I’m visiting a preschool a couple decades ago. The kids are having a wonderful time cutting and pasting. The teacher comes over to me with her best professional whisper: “We’re working on our fine motor skills today.” I wondered, If the kids knew they were working on skill development, would they still be having fun?

I guess surrounding a child with good art may be developing their Visual-Spatial Intelligence. I’d rather think we were just surrounding them with good art. What I like about these three museums is that the focus is on cool things. They slip up and mention their potential value for children now and then, but forgivably.

I guess it’s just my own kooky streak, but my first vote for kids goes to MoMa, The Museum of Modern Art. MoMaStore has a bunch of imaginative goodies for kids, guaranteed to give anyone’s “Whooee-that’s-cool!” Intelligence a bump up.

My favorites this time through:
The Chair Game

and the Concept Kitchen.

*******************

Much as I enjoy their catalog, it appears that The Art Institute of Chicago hasn’t particularly noticed that kids exist. Now wait a second, Dave, aren’t you the guy who’s always saying that we need to respect kids’ innate capacity to resonate to beauty, whether or not it’s “Child Certified"? Or did someone else write the previous paragraph? Well, that’s a good point, and as soon as I look through the catalog with that standard in mind, there’s hardly a page without something I know would have delighted our kids. For one example of many, what say you to this?

*******************

On the other hand, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has most definitely discovered kids. The category is called MetKids, and the categorized display makes it easy to look around. How about that Snake Charmer Flute? The cobra is optional.

The MindWare catalog says, “Brainy toys for kids of all ages,” and I almost always find an intriguing new game or puzzle for the waiting room at Denmark, Faris, Gaebler, Linnell, and Cantrell.

I do wish that Jeanne Voigt’s message in the current catalog didn’t say “give your child an edge in an increasingly competitive world” – you know I think the “life is a competition” perspective works against a child’s best development. (From the introduction to Grow With the Flow: ” We hear that our children will have to fight and claw their way into the world …. Wanting to prepare our kids for the worst, we are, paradoxically, in danger of giving them a taste of it.”)

But that’s a quibble about a company that routinely turns up toys, games, books and workbooks with an eye for both function and form, and a clear sense of what can help children grow.

This time around, I’m trying to decide between the Hexabits and Quarto, which I should have bought years ago. Ah! There’s Mastermind! And a client showed me Strange Attractors – unfortunately with only three pieces jammed in her pocket with the remains of a snack, so it was a little hard to see how it works, but she’s definitely a fan.

MindWare

“Cricket” magazine started chirping about the same time as Paul & Andy Cantrell did. When I saw it for the first time, I was struck not only by the lively intelligence of the magazine, but by its assumption that it was addressing itself to other lively intelligences.

André Carus, and the publishing company that has grown up around Cricket magazine, stay true to that. Some companies seem to say, “This is for smart kids.” Cricket products always seem to say “You’re a kid, so you’re smart. You like a challenge, and you can sense the difference between real fun and mindless pablum.” I like that point of view.

The last catalog I have from Cricket is for Fall, 2005. I hope you can still request the same one; it has that classic picture of a developing reader: a child reading by flashlight under the blanket.

Cricket

‘Tis the season to spend money, so you might as well get some good stuff for kids!

We’re going to list some of our favorite outfitters over the next couple weeks. Here in RiverTown, “outfitter” usually means any parent resource – anyone who provides useful concepts, counsel, or materials to Grow With the Flow readers. But for now, let’s focus on outfitters who sell good gifts for kids.

By the way, if you have a favorite outfitter along those lines, mention them in a comment or drop me a note and I’ll try to get them posted here in RiverTown News.

Shop On!

Are you new to the world of blogs and forums? I hope these instructions will help you participate in this web site.

How To Post

You can post at two different locations: You can add a comment to an article posted on RiverTown News, our blog, or you can join in conversation with other readers in the Coffee Shop, our forum. Usually, the Coffee Shop is where you want to be. RiverTown News comments are more like letters to the editor – specific disagreements with an article, for example. The Coffee Shop is for chatting with other readers about the ideas in Grow With the Flow. Many articles in the News will have a link to a “table” at the Coffee Shop where readers can talk about the article.

You can also get to the Coffee Shop by clicking on RiverTown Coffee Shop at the top of this page. You’ll see a list of “Forums” – general topic areas. Click on one of interest. That will bring you to a page of “Topics.”

If you don’t fancy any of the topics there, you can click on “New Topic” and add one.

If a topic looks interesting, click on it. You may find only my starter message, or you may find a whole series of messages – conversations about the topic. They may be closely linked to each other, or they may be loosely gathered around the topic. At the end of them, you’ll come to a screen that has buttons to either “post reply” or open a “new topic.” (The buttons are also at the top, but it usually makes more sense to read what’s already been posted.)

“Post reply” and “new topic” work almost the same. The only difference between the two is that you need to give a new topic a title. Type your thoughts in the box. If you’re responding to someone, you may want to put their name at the start, as you would in a letter.

RiverTown News has a series of articles, “posts.” You’re reading one of them right now. Click on RiverTown News at the top of the page to see all the posts. The most recent is always at the top of the page; you can scroll down to earlier ones, and then go to previous pages with older and older articles. (Why comment on an older article? Because Google is still reading it, and will lead others to it.)

Every article has a “Comments” button at the end. Find an article where you have something to say, and click on that button. Scroll down through the article; if there are already comments, they now follow it. Read down through them. After the last, there’s a place for you to add yours. Fill in the name you want to use for the post, and your email if you want to, and then just type your message in the blank box. Preview your comment and post it.

Some Suggestions About Posts

• When your comment can tie into Grow With the Flow, great, but if it’s about kids, even if you aren’t sure about the direct tie to the book, go for it!
• Just go ahead and post – you won’t break anything. If something goes funny, drop me a note and I’ll either fix it or call Paul!
• The norm is for short, informal comments, but feel free to make a post of any length, in whatever style is comfortable. People often sign with a first name.
• Whether you’re looking ahead to having kids, commenting on friends’ experience, in the thick of child rearing now, or looking back with accumulated wisdom, you have a contribution to make.
• At first, just type bare-bones messages and post them. If you get into this, you can learn to do all sorts of fancy things with HTML commands, and with all those mysterious buttons on the screen.
• Positive or negative, support or disagreement, mellow or contentious – All that matters is that you post!
• Keep on coming back! And Thanks!