Once a week I send out email invitations to our weekly parkdays. In them I give websites to family-oriented events in the LA area, photos of the fun we all had at the past parkday, and links and info about our next day at the park. I include interesting tidbits to peak the interest of the parents and entertain their children. Some families sit with their kids on their laps before the computer and go to the interactive links, others print out the activities and games from websites I suggest (which i do mostly for families who can’t get to the park). And other parents only get so far as to read the big red letters that describe the SupplyRequests for my crafts chosen for the fun factor but also to concretize their new awareness of the physical world they live in. My term for combining learning with empowering crafts or activities ~ “Active Learning.”
I lovingly prepare both my emails and parkday events to foster moments where discussions might come up around the dinner table or in our cars traveling to all the crazy and fun places homeschoolers and 
non-homeschoolers go. These are situations that can be filled with hand held video games or tv or books or storytelling between families. But history and science fun facts and games can be intermingled into our everyday world too. 
And my hope is to make that process of learning easy, fun and self-motivating. I would like to think my emails or parkday is a little bell that stays with each family, and says, “hey, this week, consider talking about how we got Earthday in the first place and how one man, a Senator (with lots of friends making suggestions to him) held Earthday as a way to get more support to get the EPA started that same year.”
One person makes a difference. You need help and support to make a good idea become a great one. Why do we need Earthday in the first place? Did it make a difference? How does the EPA affect my life? What kind of annual day would you want to start? How do you think it would change the world in 40 years of celebrating?
Over the course of TWO weeks, in honor of Senator Gaylor Nelson who founded Earthday and all the other people who helped bring our awareness back to nature, we made our very own nature snow globes with recycled glass jars. Similar to snow globes, ours had glitter to fall like snow and things of nature glued inside. (Thanks Mom R for idea and supplies!)
Families were requested to bring things from their Recyclable Building bin like cereal boxes, paper towel tubes, containers and socks. What do you do with your lonely socks who have lost their partner? We made sock puppets!
Most parkdays, families are invited to bring books from home or the library that speak to the theme of the day and of course are age appropriate. For this week’s blanket book time, where Dad N read to the kids, we had books on Peace, Books on Cultures from around the world, and books that focus on the things people all over the world have in common! The kids are also experiencing something special when a different parent takes time to read books and share ideas with the kids.
Our village is filled with wonderful role models. Sometimes the passions our children have inside are not easily mirrored by their own parents. Village lifestyle is wonderful in that it offers children other loving adults with unique passions and perspectives that might in one way or another match up with your own child. This unique musings and aspirations can all be fostered with enough diversity in a group and enough time to let them unfold at their own pace.
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”-Plato