Our unschooling theme now: Lion Dance! Vee and Jae have been fascinated by lion dances this Lunar New Year. Just imagine 2 active boys banging pot lids, drum sticks and bouncing around like mad ALL DAY LONG.
Since I can’t stop them, I joined them.
What we did in an evening…
1. Vee wants to buy a pair of lion dance pants. (There’s already a lion head at home.) I showed him the options from Taobao: Rmb700+ for a full set of head + pants vs. Rmb200+ for Northern Lion set (less attractive) vs. Rmb48 for pants.
He knows that 700+ is a big amount and was willing to propose the 200+ set. Then for a moment, he said, “Daddy works all the time, he earns money, he has A LOT of money!”
I told him our weekly grocery is RM200, so for 700 to buy something simply to play with, we’d have to go 3 weeks without food. That got him thinking. Of course, I kept it simple and didn’t go into the difference between Rmb and Ringgit. Ha!
Lessons: shopping comparison, whether the expense is necessary, why the expense is valid for performers earning ang paos from performances
2. Motor skills: teamed up with him to imitate a lion dance duo. Figure out how they coordinate to get the various postures.
3. Youtube videos of Lion Dance competition champions: “wowed” at the stunts, realise how much immense strength and practice must be needed, safety precautions
4. Pretend play & sports: the two boys then performed for me, at a much more “professional” level after watching the championship videos. Vee danced so much that he was melting with perspiration.
The lion dance craze is certainly not dying down anytime soon, so we’d probably have more fun with other activities. Bet the boys will be dreaming of lion dances again tonight!
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Photo credit: Screen shot from Youtube video, Malaysia International Lion Dance Competition Champion 2 – 2013
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