We had a great trip to the Ridgedale Library today. There was a study room just the right size for us all to have table space and enough computers for everyone to be able to have their own screen. I saw that everyone had really been formed by a scarcity mentality in their school experiences. That they could only have 2 books out from library at a time, that there was a limit on how much they could write about a topic, that the clock was against them because they needed to move on to the next activity without having really worked through what they were interested in exploring.
They were all excited to find out they could check out a rather large number of books for their own research projects. I did say we’re probably not going to try and get up to that 50 books per person limit simply because it might become a monster to manage but the excitement was delightful!
It was also really cool to see the lists of the things each one was interested in studying: everything from scorpions & spiders to space. I LOVE their curiosity and had a bit of a giggle seeing Jamie trying to navigate out of the building with her 30 pound backpack full of books about things SHE loves and wants to learn about. It is a huge blessing to say that what they want to learn about matters!
Another cool thing that we did today was work together to provide a meal for about 20 Mills Youth Youth volunteers. Lauren had the idea to make a salad bar with muffins. We made lists and shopped together. Lauren made the muffins with some recipes that she had been working on. Everyone else did part of the chopping and prepping. We got lots of positive feedback but it was really just wonderful to serve others together.
