moose vs. giraffe

We recently cut down two huge trees in our front yard. Of course, by "we" I mean "Joel." I mostly sat on our bench drinking lattes and eating ice cream.

He had never done anything like this before. In fact, I'm pretty sure he had never even picked up a chainsaw, let alone used one. So needless to say, when he first brought up this plan to borrow a buddy's chainsaw and cut down a couple of huge cedars, I was skeptical. I had visions of missing limbs and trips to the ER. But Joel assured me that he had sufficiently researched how to fell a tree (research that I am certain consisted exclusively of YouTube videos), so who was I to stand in his way?

It was a holiday Monday, and we had nothing better to do anyway, so Joel drove to his friend's house to pick up the chainsaw and get a quick lesson on how to turn it on and not cut off his arm, and away we went.

Joel did great! He didn't cut off his arm, he didn't land a massive tree onto our house or any passing cars, and he even made us a huge pile of firewood. As the final tree fell to the ground, there were cheers all around, from myself and the kids as well as some neighbours who had set up their chairs out front to watch the show.

We all learned a lot that day. Joel learned how to cut down a tree. I learned to trust my husband a little more. And the kids learned an amazing amount of totally random things.

As Joel was cutting off the lower branches, Ella started gathering twigs and greenery into a small pile on the driveway. I asked what she was doing and she told me that she was collecting moose food. She informed me that moose use their strong lips to strip the green stuff off the branches, and they even like to eat the twigs, too. It seems as though Martin and Chris Kratt are doing a great job of teaching my kids all about animals! Liam joined her in the hopes that a stray moose might wander by in the night to eat this delectable feast that they were preparing. He said to me, "If we wake up in the morning and the pile of moose food is gone, then we will know that a moose came and ate it! Or maybe a giraffe, because they eat leaves, too." Naturally, the kids then wondered what might happen if both a moose and a giraffe showed up for the food. Who would win the ensuing fight? After much debate, Liam concluded that the giraffe would win because he could wrap his long neck around the moose to debilitate him. It was one of the funniest and most interesting conversations I had ever witnessed between them. It was so cool to see them using their knowledge of animals to debate what might happen. Even though a moose is never actually going to fight a giraffe, the logic and facts they were drawing upon was pretty solid.

That day we also found a patch of mushrooms in the grass, which brought up many questions about what mushrooms are, where they grow, how we know if they are good to eat, and so on.

Liam also spent some time helping Joel drag the fallen branches, and he learned quite a bit about hard work and perseverance. I couldn't believe how long he worked for! And I couldn't believe how truly helpful a 4-year-old could be with this type of manual labour. Not once did we ask him to help, or tell him that he would be paid or rewarded for his time; he was just so excited to work with his dad and to do "real" work!

Of course, the kids also learned lots of stuff about trees as well. They were full of questions about how the chainsaw worked, why daddy was cutting off the branches, which way the tree was going to fall (and how we knew it was going to fall that way), and many more. We also spent a while looking at the logs that were cut. We counted the rings, studied the bark, felt the smooth wood underneath the bark, discovered very sticky sap (and talked about maple syrup), and saw how a new branch grows.

I love that this is how we get to learn every day! By simply doing something that needed to get done anyway, the kids (and Joel!) had the opportunity to learn and discover so many new things. By allowing the kids to be part of everything we were doing instead of keeping them "out of the way," they got to be exposed to so much cool stuff. By leaving them to their own devices instead of "assigning" them tasks or trying to teach them what I thought they should learn about trees, they were able to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. Unschooling for the win!