In the midst of chaos...

“When we are in the midst of chaos, let go of the need to control it.”

--Leo Babauta, author, blogger @ Zen Habits

It’s good advice. Seriously. And it comes to mind as I think about the children I met at our first SOLE Hour at Kearny Public Library, because the hallmark of chaos is not knowing what is going to happen.

So we began and narrowed down a great big question to investigate. ...but we couldn’t decide. Two rounds of voting and we had a tie between “Can dogs understand humans?” and “Why is there no oxygen in space?”

Well what do we do now? Cue a little voice: “Can’t we do both?”

“Say yes, and figure it out afterwards”

--Tina Fey

We decided, yes, we could. And we learned some interesting things (and here I have to apologize for the lack of pictures, as the unusual set up required my usual camera, an iPad, be used by the kids).

We learned most dogs learn a small vocabulary of human words.

We learned about Chaser, the dog that understands over 1,000 words!

We learned most people talk to their dogs, think their dogs understand more than the dogs actually do, and why we talk “baby talk” to our dogs.

We learned there IS, in fact Oxygen in space (seriously, who knew?). But the universe is so vast that the oxygen is spread too thin for humans to use.

And we had a heck of a lot of fun, as always. And, as always, I can’t wait to come back, Kearny.