Failure... leads to Insight?

So I'm a failure- I failed to bring home my embodied player this week!!! I left it in the cupboard in our classroom. I feel like such a loser- I was excited to take pictures of my player with me during Spring Break. Also, I like to follow the rules, and since the "rule" was to write a blog after Spring Break about our times with our embodied players, I felt rather badly about forgetting my player.

Levi, Krystal, Seth, Leah, and Me

However, as I started to think about Spring Break, and who I would like to be as a player, I thought of my sweet friend Leah. Leah is 8 years old, in third grade, and practically perfect in every way. She's my best friend Krystal's daughter, and I really love her. While I also sincerely enjoy and love both of Krystal's other kids (Seth and Levi), there's something special about Leah and I's friendship.

This past week I went to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis with the Jones kids and Krystal, and we had a blast! I had never been, at least not to my recollection, and I was really excited to go. It was everything I hoped for and more! We saw basically all of the exhibits, and of course, took lots of fun pictures.

Thinking about who I would want to be as a player made me think of Leah, because Leah is wonderful when it comes to play. She's incredibly kind, and while very shy at first, once she opens up she is quite the talker. She's really fun to be around and to play with, as she loves to have fun, laugh, and go with the flow. Throughout the day, despite having seen these exhibits before, she still took it all in as though it was the first time. There were multiple times when her brothers wouldn't want to do something because they had done it before, but Leah would take every chance to do anything offered at the museum, whether it was a craft, digging for dinosaur bones, or playing dress up.

Leah digging for bones

More than anything, Leah doesn't let anything stand in her way of play. She has fun no matter what she is doing. Even if it's something she's done a million times, she makes it fun somehow. She's not inhibited the way so many of us "old folks" are.

Leah playing dress up with scuba gear

Leah striking a pose in Egypt

Leah and Krystal- "Walk like an Egyptian"

Leah in Egypt.

Leah and I

After the Children's Museum, the girls went to Trader Joe's, our absolutely most favorite grocery store ever. While we were in the store a song came on, to which Leah said, "That's our school song! We dance to it every Friday!" So, I asked her to show me the dance. Without hardly blinking an eye, in the middle of the grocery store, she starts dancing. I LOVE THAT! While I generally have few inhibitions, I love that she didn't even seem to think about the cultural norm of how to act in a grocery store. Before long, Krystal and I were both dancing with Leah, and all of us were laughing hysterically. The great thing is that everyone else in the store that we saw laughed with us, and seemed to love that we were having such a great time.

So, to sum up this post, I want to be more like Leah. I want to be uninhibited with my play- to enjoy it fully no matter the situation.