We drove around Annapolis Maryland to check out some murals. We talked about how artists are commissioned to do these paintings and the difference between murals and graffiti.

One thing I was surprised to see around the city was these fun giant chicken sculptures. Throughout Baltimore you can find giant crab sculptures, and in Norfolk, VA they have mermaid sculptures. I understand crabs for Baltimore and mermaids for Norfolk, but the Annapolis chicken?? I will have to look up the history and the city’s connection to this bird. I love these types of sculptures and how they are used to define and bring identity to a city. I think our City of Laurel should have something but what should it be? Let the ideas begin.

We talked about common road names like road, court, lane, and street. I asked Jam to make an address for his room and he picked “Sewer road” for a street name because everything we do has to be connected to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

 I asked I'm where he wanted to start giving directions from and he picked our red car. I proceeded to walk him though the path to his room. 

We stopped at every changed in direction and discussed what should be written down. When we got to steps I would ask him things like what is the next step? He would say turn left then I would ask him questions like should we say walk up steps or just say turn left?

After we finished the sheet Jam gave it to his father to see if they worked. After a silly start his father made it to his room, and then gave some suggestions on how to make it easier like adding step counts.

 

Afterwards we talked about his likes and dislikes of the playground. He said his favorite piece of equipment was the tic-tac-toe board, but the playground needed swings. One of his comments about the design was “it (the playground) has all the cool stuff other parks have”. There was no uniqueness. I asked him what would he add to the playground and he said he wanted a race track for small race cars.

Day two we went to a completely different type of playground. It is located in the woods at the edge of a stream verses an open field next to a road. This playground had the swings Jam was so eager for but that’s about it. Instead of the popular large play unit it had freestanding equipment- a total of 5.  Jam said the playground was quite boring however he had much fun on the duck spring rider.