Shadow Play

One of the days last week I had to run up to BYU to buy some of my ballet CD's.  It was the dead middle of the day.  It was also probably the last true warm day we will have this year.  The sun was shining bright and Madalynn was skipping along singing.  She was trying to engage me in the song, but I was in a hurry to get my kids home and get back to work.  Of course, she grew more and more frustrated.....and so did I.  She started lagging behind complaining about her legs hurting.  However, I was determined to not loose my temper and was trying to figure out how to get her to move quickly.

I don't know where thoughts come from in my mind...however, all of a sudden I stepped on her shadow and called out to her, "you can't catch mine!"  Well, naturally all the college kids were staring at us as we were running up the walks across the square in front of the library, all the way up the walk to the visitor parking at the MOA.  By the time we were done, I was sweating from running, dying from laughing and she was having the time of her life.  I didn't always let her get the shadow.  Sometimes I hid behind the stroller, sometimes I let turned a little and made it fall on the stroller, and sometimes I let it fall right under her feet.  We talked about how shadows are created.  She watched and then tried the various ways to get it to change direction.  We talked about the sun and its placement.  We watched how it was different when we were running along a diagonal across the square and when we were running in a straight line up a hill.

It was just a good reminder to me that playing/learning are always combined.  It was a small, but very significant moment to remind me how to have patience with my daughter.  Man, she moved right along once we were having some fun.  My son of course was super jealous...as he was strapped in a stroller.  I would have let him out if I wasn't trying to get on and off campus in less than 15 minutes.  Next time we will have to let him play too.

Hope you enjoyed our outing.