Controlled Pyromania

A day or two ago, I heard one of my guileless children talking to his brother about how this great book said that they could make fires with a magnifying glass. Just another reason all this reading books stuff isn't necessarily a good thing. Given my enthusiastic pyromania when I was a child, I thought maybe I should try to make this an adult-monitored activity rather than just trying to forbid it.

So, we got out some magnifying glasses (plastic and very cheap) and experimented with what would catch on fire quickest. Old leaves were the best, but clumps of dead grass worked really well too.

It was at about this point that Theo poked his head out the door, grinning and said, "Juvenile Delinquency begins at home." Defending myself, I said, "I'd rather them have supervised... and this way I can give them suggestions, I mean guidance, I mean... you know what I mean." I returned to the boys and Theo returned inside snickering at me.

I told Kai and Rowan about keeping the smoldering materials on the concrete, keeping water nearby and never trying to set anything living on fire. The last microbonfire, we put out with a babyjar full of water. I told them to use their fingers to test the heat. If it was too hot to touch, it was too hot to leave -- always stay with your fire until it's out.

They did the best job of investigating, testing hypotheses, and developing theories of any scientific fooling around we've ever done. Why didn't I think about incinerating things before? Anyhow, after about an hour, I tore them away from their experiments and brought them inside to talk about things like optics and how to determine focal points, the things a fire needs to burn, how to put a fire out by taking away it's fuel, heat or oxygen (water takes out the heat, stop-drop-roll smothers it, etc), and how if they want to do fire experiments they need to bring mom or dad out to help or at least observe. They sat and listened attentively, asked probing questions and were very engaged. Generally this is the part of our experiments when they get antsy and try to sidle away. When I was done, Kai actually said, sincerely, "Thanks for the lecture, mom." WHAT? He said, "Lecture means 'teach', right?" Stunned, I nodded and walked away. This behavior of theirs seems very suspicious.

I have been asked if we can do this again after breakfast tomorrow.