We took advantage of Daddy-o being off work on Monday to go down to the Greenville, SC Zoo and met up with some friends. There isn't a zoo in Charlotte, so we are slowly exploring the 3 zoos within 2 hours of us. This was the smallest of the three, but the kids had a blast.
There were a couple fun play areas and plenty of animals to see. Things were a little more casual than we're used to--people throwing food into the animals, the elephant throwing poop out to the people--lots of fun.
We also talked a little bit about Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he did. I'm not sure about how these discussions went. We tried to keep it pretty basic--people used to be seperated in schools and shopping and church, and he helped change it so everyone can play and work and live together, wherever they want-- so I thought the kids understood, but the take-away message doesn't quite line up with what I thought I was saying. Bean now plays games where she seperates out the "blacks and whites", when she's eating beans, or playing with toys, and the other day told me that she had a disease that made her white and that if she touched any black people, they would get sick and turn white, too. I asked her if there was a cure so they could go back to normal, but she didn't think so. I'm unsure if its a good thing that this seemed to open up the idea of race and different colored skin, or if we're completely missing the point. I just read something about how caucasians tend to not teach their kids anything about race because they are afraid of coming off racist by acknowledging the difference, so I guess we are fighting that trend, right?
We took advantage of Daddy-o being off work on Monday to go down to the Greenville, SC Zoo and met up with some friends. There isn't a zoo in Charlotte, so we are slowly exploring the 3 zoos within 2 hours of us. This was the smallest of the three, but the kids had a blast.
We also talked a little bit about Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he did. I'm not sure about how these discussions went. We tried to keep it pretty basic--people used to be seperated in schools and shopping and church, and he helped change it so everyone can play and work and live together, wherever they want-- so I thought the kids understood, but the take-away message doesn't quite line up with what I thought I was saying. Bean now plays games where she seperates out the "blacks and whites", when she's eating beans, or playing with toys, and the other day told me that she had a disease that made her white and that if she touched any black people, they would get sick and turn white, too. I asked her if there was a cure so they could go back to normal, but she didn't think so. I'm unsure if its a good thing that this seemed to open up the idea of race and different colored skin, or if we're completely missing the point. I just read something about how caucasians tend to not teach their kids anything about race because they are afraid of coming off racist by acknowledging the difference, so I guess we are fighting that trend, right?
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