I’ve got a confessions to make: I’m a closet Curious George fan. I just love that little monkey. And although I may be slightly older than the target audience for the t.v. show, I’m a pretty devoted viewer. Not only do I find it entertaining, but it also inspires me to try all kinds of George-ish experiments. Seriously: if you’re looking for some fun ideas, watch a few clips and then go recreate them in your own back yard!
Here’s one my son and I tried out one spring as we were deciding where to plant our vegetable garden.
One sunny morning, we grabbed some colored masking tape and headed into the back yard (we also could have used yarn/string and sticks or sidewalk chalk, but we were in a masking tape kind of mood). First, we scoped out some good shadows. A fence, a big tree, and the shed were our picks. We stuck the tape on the grass to outline the shadow. Then, if memory serves, we went inside and treated ourselves to a yummy snack.
A couple of hours later, we revisited our shadows. Lo and behold – they had moved! We used a different color tape to outline the new shadows. We did this every couple of hours throughout the day, each time outlining the shadows in a different colored tape. By early evening, we’d tracked a day’s worth of shadows, explored the ins and outs of shadow movement, figured out where we wanted to plant our garden, and – as an added bonus – ended up with a rainbow-colored back yard.
Curious George: you rock!