Educational Tape

My 3 year old son Alexander taped this plastic bowl to the dining room wall today. Why? Who knows? Did he like the pleasing contrast of colors (art appreciation?) Did he wonder how much tape was required to get the bowl to stay in place (Physics?) Perhaps, but I suspect that his real motivation was simply to use tape.

Both my kids love tape. I have an office desk style tape dispenser so that I can (almost) always find it, and so that I only have to buy refills. In case you've never noticed, tape is not cheap! Not when you have homeschoolers anyway. (I imagine all kids like tape, but school kids either get to waste the taxpayer's tape for a good portion of the day, or else simply don't have access to tape while in school, saving their parents' hard-earned dough.) It's worth it though, for the entertainment and, yes, educational value.

The other day, the kids spent nearly an hour taping coins to pieces of construction paper. (Inspired by the tooth fairy, who taped 5 year old Brianna's tooth money to paper so that it wouldn't get lost in the sheets.) They used gobs of tape, and ended up with pieces of paper that weighed at least a pound each. When they were done, I asked Brianna how much her paper was worth. We tallied up the coin values on the abacus, which happened to coincide neatly with her math curriculum, in which she is learning about coins and adding mulitiple quantities of numbers. I think I should deduct the cost of tape on our taxes as an educational expense!