April 7 - More Product Testing

Zephyr with the Kwik Stix set

More product testing today, with the kids trying out the Kwik Stix set of tempera colors and the snapcircuits build-it-yourself FM radio. Well, we actually didn't get much of a chance to use the snapcircuits thing, really. But we did get to go nuts with the tempra sticks!

The tempera sticks are essentially like glue sticks you can draw with. Zephyr used them to make some drawings of flowers from Plants Vs. Zombies. The sticks are really thick, so they didn't do details so great, but the colors are indeed bright as advertised. And they weren't messy! I was dubious about that claim, but it was accurate. They were definitely easy enough for Lyric to use them effectively, too!

Lyric used the tempera sticks to draw a cool picture of the Teen Titans! He was really into telling me how Cyborg had one red eye and Starfire was flying. I was pretty impressed by this one. It's loose in form, but I really dug how he took in the body shapes and poses. And this was all freehand!

From L to R: Raven, Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy

From L to R: Starfire, Robin, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven

I mean, check out that Beast Boy. Very cool.

This is what he gives me when I ask him to smile.

We started trying to make the snapcircuits radio, but ran out of time. It was a bit harder than it looked.

So overall, I think I'd give the Tempra Kwik Stix an A- and the Snapcircuits radio an incomplete. We'll try to revisit that this weekend.

April 6 - Product testing!

Thanks to Chay Costello Sosin from the MoMA Design store for delivering these toys for our subjects to test! For that matter, thanks to Chay Costello Sosin for delivering these subjects to test these toys she also delivered. Happy Mother's Day early, Honey!

Today's activity of Detective Training was pre-empted for Product Testing again! Today we tried out two new games: DR. EUREKA, a test-tube pouring brain teaser game, and MAKE N' BREAK, a timed building challenge game. Both were a lot of fun! Let's review!

DR. EUREKA's test tubes, colored molecule balls, and challenge cards

The first game we checked out was DR. EUREKA, and it was immediately popular with the kids. The point of DR. EUREKA is to take plastic test tubes with wooden colored "molecule balls" in them and get them into the permutations shown on the challenge cards by pouring them into one another. The act of pouring one test tube into another is somewhat crucial in this: if anyone spills, they're out of the challenge (in theory). It's harder than it looks, especially for younger kids with little patience. You have to tilt the test tube up juuuuuuuuuust enough to pour one ball out and leave one ball in most of the time, and getting that precise angle requires a bit of fine motor skills. Lyric (age 4 and a half) kept on dropping the balls everywhere, which is probably age appropriate, but Zephyr (age 7 and a half) was starting to get the hang of it.

Not pictured: a bunch of attempts that left little balls rolling around the floor.

On the one hand, one could call the balls dropping to the floor a mess, but it is WAY less of a mess than if liquid were in those test tubes.  Let it also be said that there is something SO SATISFYING about rolling balls from one test tube to the other, it just seems to scratch an itch like r/oddlysatisfying videos on reddit. And I think the fine motor practice was especially good for the boys, plus the brain teaser element was fun for me (possibly a little advanced for the kids, but they were just learning). All in all, I give this game an A. Definitely a fun thing to do for kids - kids 8 and up would probably use it the right way, but younger kids could still have fun with it.

MAKE N' BREAK's blocks, timer, die, and challenge cards

Next was the construction game MAKE N' BREAK. The point of this game was to make as many of the structures on the challenge cards with the colored blocks as you could in the time allowed. Zephyr took to this game almost immediately.

Lyric was put in charge of the timer for this one, as the building was a bit outside his age group. But he really got into being the timekeeper.

Which is not to say he accurately measured the time, but so what.

Zephyr loved playing this game, and got how to build stuff super-quick. He also really loved tearing his things down after he built them up, getting a bit too excited about it at one point and sending blocks everywhere. But when he saw that was a bad strategy, he was more controlled about his demolition.

All in all, another really fun game that helped with fine manipulation and visual thinking. Another A! More product testing tomorrow, with a special guest!

April 5 - Superhero Drawing Studio

HYPOTHESIS: By drawing with younger subjects, you can impart a variety of lessons about how to draw and help develop the right side of their brain.

PROCEDURE: Started to draw a superhero on my own as subjects were finishing breakfast to model creative behavior for them. When I asked older subject (Zephyr, age 7 and a half) what he wanted to draw, he said he wanted to draw the cartoon birds from mobile game Tiny Wings (a current obsession). Demonstrated to subject how the characters are designed on a basic circular model and showed him tips on drawing in that style. Subject retrieved iPad to base drawings on actual images.

Subject was especially dubious about method of drawing the nest ("It's not an oval shape! It looks like a U!") but came to see how one shape was actually in front of another. Subject colored in drawing with sharpies.

Younger subject (Lyric, age 4 and a half) did not want to draw superheroes and preferred to dress up as a superhero.

As Robin, natch.

When I suggested that maybe he might want to draw a bird like other subject was doing, younger subject suggested we dress the bird as Robin as well. I immediately praised the idea of the younger subject and got right on drawing a version of a Tiny Wings bird dressed as Robin.

Note: we ran out of time and didn't get to color it in (maybe some other time we will), but I like that I showed the kids they could think of an idea and just draw it out of thin air.

RESULTS: I feel like I got to impart a bunch of lessons and model a lot of good creative behavior for the subjects with a minimum of effort. Very pleased with the results.

April 4 - Chess Puzzles

HYPOTHESIS: Monthly Chess exercises will breed more familiarity with the game and better ability to plan and strategize

PROCEDURE: Younger subject (Lyric, age 4 and a half) was first tested on being able to name all six chess types. Previous testing revealed he knew 4 of 6 pieces' names. Older subject (Zephyr, age 7 and a half) was tasked to stand behind younger subject and make "it's good" signal if correct (both hands up in the air) or "no good" signal (arms crossed in an x) depending on the answers of younger subject. Results:

RESULT: Younger subject got 5 right and missed only one (the Bishop, admittedly the trickiest piece). This means a 17% increase in knowledge, not bad at all!

Then the Older subject was challenged to a game on the clock and to figure out the following puzzle (from Black's perspective) from Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess: Can you figure out if black is checkmated, and if not, what their move is out of checkmate?

Zephyr's finger is on the black King. This might be tricky!

RESULT: Older subject DID figure out the answer to the chess puzzle (hint: it doesn't involve fleeing or interposing between the king and the attacking piece) and gave a spirited performance in a loss in the game. But fun was had by all, which in itself is the most important result.

April 2 - New Schedule! Plus some thoughts

April schedule is ready! Three full weeks and then SPRING BREAK! Whooooooo!

April is here and we've got a whole new bunch of activities planned for our mornings. Only one new thing this month, the Tea Party Manners challenge on the 18th. That should be fun.

Other fun things this month:

• Hopefully at some point sooner rather than later this month we'll release the 360 film we made this week, THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND. We still have to shoot the credit sequence and I have to learn how to edit together a 360 film, but we're close to getting that done.
• Possibly a bird-centric treasure hunt on the 13th, since Zephyr is studying them at school. Good news for ornithologists!
• STYLE UPDATE: I want to try a new, more scientific writing voice this week, as an experiment. If it seems like it's working I might try and keep it up for the whole month, but let's see how it goes first.
• Maybe we'll shoot a (raunchy) Spring Break comedy during the last week of the month? Like, four and a half year old raunchy, so lots of butt and booger talk. Not really sure yet, this is almost certainly a terrible idea. But is it SO terrible that it's a great idea? I'll return to this idea later.

So stay tuned for more #parenting fun and #radicalhonesty! Tell me if you think I'm getting the hang of this.

April 1 - Filmmaking (Day Five)

This morning Lyric came to me as I was waking up and said he had a nightmare there was a dinosaur in the microwave. I told him it was just a dream and that nightmares can't hurt you, but he demanded I look in the microwave to make sure. Here's what I found:

In the spirit of #radicalhonesty, Lyric TOTALLY BLEW IT last night when, as soon as I came home, he blurted out "Don't look in the microwave!" The kid is humorously awful at keeping secrets. He had also hidden several other things, which he would systematically set and then get too impatient for someone to find it tomorrow.

I did manage to get him back. I told him I had gone out shopping last night and picked up some stuff for breakfast. I asked Lyric if he wanted pepperoni, which he jumped at (it's his favorite). But then I gave him this:

Not pepperoni... PAPER-oni! April Fools!

As for our morning activity, It was supposed to rain this morning, so instead of going out to film more of our 360 film THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND, we conducted a slightly more simple shoot indoor with Professor Hotcakes. I have a whole adult puppet show I'm working on starring Professor Hotcakes, but today was the first day I brought him into our morning activities.

Professor Hotcakes has been up to some April Fools hijinks! Good luck getting the formaldehyde smell out of the fridge @benjaminellisfine

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on Apr 1, 2016 at 5:00am PDT

I should probably explain a little: Professor Hotcakes is a superintelligent and eccentric crimefighting plate of pancakes and "Shortstack" is his sidekick Benny (who hates the name "Shortstack"). Not sure if that clears anything up, but there you go. Zephyr did the camera, which (finally) allowed me to demonstrate the Professor's eye movement ability!

We might try and pick up the last title shot for THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND this weekend, and then next week I'll try editing it together. Fingers crossed!

March 31 - Filmmaking (Day Four)

Okay, so we were supposed to do the other camera angle today for our 360 Film THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND (so we could cut between the two 360 shots) but Lyric was acting like a total diva.

It started when I was trying to get him dressed in the same outfit he wore the previous day (as I tried teaching the kids the meaning of the word "continuity"). Lyric has his own idea of what he wants to wear, and to be honest, it's pretty different than what we usually try to dress him in. "I don't like dressing handsome", he'll say to me. Lyric wants to wear superhero clothes and very specific superhero clothes at that. Lately it has tended to just Robin shirts and green pants. If he could, he would wear his underwear on the outside ("superhero style") so we had to make a rule that he can't leave the house like that. I managed to get him in the same jacket and a hat somewhat like the hoodie he wore the first day, but I buckled on the same pants. So much for continuity.

It was a beautiful morning, so to my surprise there were other kids in the playground. We shoot super-early (starting at around 7a) so this was somewhat unusual. regardless, though, we went at it. We got one solid take in, but then Lyric started... freelancing.

Lyric stopping Zephyr from using his sword. "No no no! You can't use that!" he said.

At the crucial point in the scene where I chase the kids, Lyric just stood up to me and looked at me, smiling. I thought maybe he was trying to make friends with the monster at first (which comes in our "script" a bit later) but he didn't really approach me. Zephyr got the swords for our fight scene, but Lyric kept stopping him, saying "No no no! You can't use that!" He did this three times, every time Zephyr picked something up. I gave Lyric a moment to see what he was up to, but then I got it: He wanted to exercise his power. If he wanted to stop the film and ruin the take, he could. He was throwing a Lohan-esque diva tantrum to show the director who's boss.

I stopped the take and told Lyric that I wanted to see stronger listening from him (which has essentially been a recurring theme with him the past few months). I told him he had to follow the action we laid out to make the movie make sense, but he stood firm. Lyric has a lot of willpower, from one perspective. From another perspective, though, he is just SUPER STUBBORN. He'll smile when people chide him, and I can't quite tell if that's because he's trying to look cute so he doesn't get in as much trouble or if he enjoys seeing people get worked up over him.

I tried going over with him what I wanted him to do (again), but Lyric said he wasn't going to be in the film and walked off to play with the other kid in the playground. I was kind of stunned. I figured I'd try going ahead with filming anyway. He eventually came around and tried to get back in the film, but stayed more in the back with his new friend.

Regardless, just in the one good take we did get, I think we got what we needed. Some clips:

March 30 - Filmmaking (Day three)

More filming from our 360 film THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND this morning. We came to a decision that the kids will play, then the monster comes out, then the monster chases the kids, then the kids defeat the monster, but then finally the kids make friends with the monster. That's a nice story arc, if you ask me. Some sneak peeks from today's action:

More coming tomorrow!

March 29 - Filmmaking (Day two)

Okay! Today we actually got started with the shoot for the 360 video THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND. The plan worked out pretty great... we had the playground all to ourselves, the early light was fantastic, and the kids got to run around in a playground.

Zephyr and the 360 camera

Looking over the footage, I think I'm the biggest problem with the film so far. It looks too weird when I stand up as the monster. I gotta channel my inner Andy Sirkis and really get into being the creature if this is going to work right. I had a few good moments, though.

I have to stay in this squat position the whole time next time we shoot. You can see Zephyr running in the background.

I also have to work a bit with Lyric on taking direction. There was a lot of him going rogue on set today. But on the plus side, when I asked them to take 5 while I checked what we got, this happened:

Pretty nice green room this playground has!

More tomorrow!

March 28 - Filmmmaking (Day One)

I feel a little guilty as I thought I was going to blog on Friday but I didn't.  Rest assured we did decorate Easter eggs... PRO TIP: if you get "craft Easter eggs" you don't have to hard-boil them or anything and you can use sharpies to decorate them. Plus they don't smell sulfurous like eggs and won't go bad. Not sure if you can tell, but few things gross me out as much as a hard-boiled egg. Bleh.

Here's how they came out! Not too bad! Definitely not too smelly, which is a victory in and of itself.

But anyway, today we start another week-long intensive on filmmaking, and for this month's film, I want to try something new and exciting: MAKING A 360 FILM WITH MY KIDS. We've already made one together for Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth, and then if you count this other one we did during the making ofthe 2D version of Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth, the kids already have two 360 videos under their belt. This is more than most fillmmakers have, and I'd like to get them way ahead of the curve by making a third, this time from their own imagination.

The way I see it, with 360 video, finding a space to do a shoot is half the battle. You need to design a set that lends itself to exploration and then let your actors run around the set. I chose a playground on our block that opens bright and early. I figure we can get there and open it up for a few days to shoot our film.

When I told Zephyr where we'd be shooting, I asked him if he could come up with a story we could shoot there. Zephyr came up with a film called "THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND", and I think that totally nailed it.

Here's what we're going to do:

1. I'm going to set the 360 camera up in the center of the playground for a few mornings.
2. While the kids run around the playground in circles, going over the playground equipment and such, I will hide wearing a monster mask at various places in the playground.
3. Eventually I will get out of my hiding spot and chase the kids around in a circle as the monster.
4. Then they will do something and end up chasing me and defeating me
5. I'll splice together a few days worth of video and turn it into a 1-2 minute film.

What I'm hoping the end effect will be like is something like one of those "when you see it" pictures, where close inspection of the shot can reveal something surprising. I made the mask up this weekend out of a box of ziti, some black construction paper, some red yarn, and two pink plastic easter eggs I turned into four spider-like eyes.

The mask.

Yaaaah!

So we were going to shoot the first one today, but it was rainy this morning, so Zephyr and Lyric came up with this Vine:

A translation is DEFINITELY needed here: Braniac (played by Lyric) laughs and says "HA HA HA! My Invention is gonna turn superheroes into super-spaghetti!" and then Braniac 5 (played by Zephyr) bursts in and says "Have that for lunch!" Not one of our strongest vines, but it was spontaneous and fairly rushed because the kids were all noodly and slow to start their day after a long weekend.

But tomorrow... shooting begins!

March 24 - Feats of Speed

Lyric wanted to switch around the morning activity this morning, and I'm going to try and faithfully get down what he asked for:

"I want it to be a game where you're a monster and you chase us around and you're holding my turtle Spikey but then you get chased by usand we run around after you and we get to hold Spikey."

Okay! We're going to try and do that.

I brought this game out into our hallway so I could give the kids space to run around. We were going to do it outside, but it's still a bit too cold in the mornings. I grabbed Lyric's turtle Spikey for whatever reason, and Lyric wore a mask and his backpack as a jetpack, because that's how he rolls. And then, yeah, essentially I just chased them around for about fifteen minutes.

There was maybe a little bit more to it than that... I would act like I was about to catch them and then they would just slip through my grasp, or they would declare something to be "base" and I would flick an imaginary switch to change the base to somewhere else, and then they would run to that base in a holy terror. Simple little rule changes to keep them moving and keep things in action. Pretty successful, all told.

One more thing to note: although I normally chant "Feats of Speed! Feats of Speed!" as they race during this morning activity, I did NOT do it this time because I was trying to keep a little quiet in deference to our neighbors. That's more of either an outside thing or an inside our own house thing.

March 23 - Sweet Ninja Moves

The kids have been taking Karate classes at this fantastic dojo recently, and today's Sweet Ninja Moves activity is essentially lifted whole-cloth from two things they do there which I kind of love. They're simple games that train for focus and let the kids have fun doing it.

First there's the listening game ofArrows / Rocks / Noodles / Chambers, which is just Simon Says with Karate hand positions. Arrows are open hands, rocks are fists, noodles are wiggly fingers (not used often in actual karate, I'm guessing), and chambers are fists pulled back to your chest.

Once the kids know the positions, you just bark out orders and they have to keep up. You can also throw in "crazy rocks" or "crazy noodles" to make them wave their hands around while in the correct position, that's fun. It's so simple but it's so good for them to get practice immediately processing information and acting on it. To play well requires focus, and that's SO IMPORTANT to instill in your kids. I don't do it nearly enough.

After that as a warm up, we moved on to a dodging challenge. In this, you take a tubular object and have kids jump over it as it comes towards them on the floor, or duck under it when it comes at them horizontally in the air, or dodge to the side as it comes at them vertically. In the dojo they use pool noodles to do this, which probably works better than what I used, an old toy lightsaber. But it did the trick alright.

Duck!

The kids had to learn to stay on their feet, even while ducking. They kept on wanting to play this over and over again, and Zephyr REALLY wanted a turn swinging the lightsaber.

Lyric jumping over the lightsaber attack. Sweet ninja moves indeed.

This was a quick one... or at least it felt quick. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

And we were having fun.

March 22 - Superhero Adventure

Another Superhero Adventure today, and unlike last time, I wanted to be prepared this time around. So I prepped a scenario we could solve through cooperative play: A moon base had a critical leak of gamma energy, and to fix it, one of us would have to flick a (pretend) switch while the other two connected while touching buttons (placed far enough away that one person couldn't touch both on their own). Zephyr saw me making the buttons as he was having breakfast and wanted to get in on the act.

The kids got into their superhero outfits - Lyric as Stripe Boy, Zephyr as Dr. Ice - and prepared to shoot out into space.

I gave them their mission as Professor Plutonium, but almost immediately they started adding onto it by coming up with a villain named Red Volcano who was simultaneously threatening the earth as this moon base was having its gamma energy crisis. I think they may have wanted me to become Red Volcano and chase them around a bit, but I stayed as their ally and played along with the scenario. My goal was constantly to try and get them to problem solve: For example, If Red Volcano was pounding our spaceship with lava blasts, we could try and deflect the heat with Dr. Ice's ice shields. Whatever it took to get to the moon base before it exploded.

Their bunk bed was our spaceship. Lyric was loading it with supplies before we blasted off.

When we got to the moon base / living room, the kids immediately homed in on the three buttons I had put up on the wall. They couldn't quite each touch a button and reach each other, but they solved the problem by using a shoehorn to connect themselves together.

They actually wanted to do this scenario a bunch of times with different combinations of people (me and Lyric, me and Zephyr, Zephyr and Lyric). I was proud of them for coming up with the shoehorn workaround, I thought they might have to grab onto each other's legs or something.

With the Gamma Energy safely contained, we could battle Red Volcano. I had Red Volcano trap Lyric in a Fire cage (using a Hoberman sphere) so that Zephyr could work to free him.

Stripe Boy! Nooooooo!

After a pretend pounding of Red Volcano (Zephyr said "we're going to have to solve this problem... by punching!", which I wanted to try and correct so that I could tell them that violence doesn't solve anything, but which I found myself unable to do because I found it so funny) we had to wrap up our superhero adventure for the day.

I always feel like I could do more for this activity, but the kids always seem to have a good time even when I half-ass it. Any little thing you can do to prepare for it is appreciated by the kids, though.

March 21 - Detective Training

There's a note on my phone where I've been keeping track of the various birthdays my kids' stuffed animals have. They've tried to front sometimes like their birthdays are all the time, but I have to tell them, "Uh, no, I have it right here that your teddy bear's birthday isn't until August." I bring this up because last night they alerted me that two of their stuffed bears had birthdays on March 21st: Zephyr's bear Fluffington Q. Bear Esq. (or "Fluffy") and Lyric's bear Bat-Bear.

Maybe they remembered it was a day after Zephyr's half birthday? Whatever the case was, they were right, and we had to make those birthday bears feel special. So they'd hide and the kids would have to find them for Detective Training.

Fluffy got hidden first. I put him in our umbrella stand, underneath a red bike helmet. He was essentially invisible. This was going to be challenging.

They'd have to lift up the red helmet to see him.

The kids searched around for a while, and when they asked for a clue, I went to get a scrap of paper and wrote out the following for them:

So Zephyr started looking under his backpack and underneath the couch cushions and Lyric looked behind our curtains, but nothing was there.

I didn't want them to get too frustrated, so I made one more clue for them. I just drew this:

The non-red parts just came from some water Lyric had spilled on the table, but they got that I was drawing a red semicircle. Zephyr seemed stumped, but Lyric ran over to the red helmet and found Fluffy. He was pretty proud of it, too.

Then I had to hide Bat Bear, and the pressure was on because I could tell that Zephyr felt he needed to find this one to balance things out. I stuffed Bat Bear into the blue drawer in their room they keep any kind of balls in. As they looked, I told them it would be a lot easier to find something in their room if they made it a little cleaner, and together we picked up some of the stuffed animals they had cluttering the floor.

Keeping their room tidy demands eternal vigilance.

With the room a little bit more tidy, I ran to the other room and wrote them another cryptic clue:

I was trying to draw a bunch of balls, but Zephyr started getting all wrapped up in how many were blue and how many were red and how many were yellow. So I doubled down on cryptic clues and gave them this:

Always a tricky word for me, because if I look at it too long it seems like it should rhyme with "doing". Actually, more of a vice versa situation (where "doing" starts looking like it sounds like a spring activating), but still.

Again, trying to push the ball theme. Zephyr thought about it for a moment and then had a eureka moment: look in the drawer with the balls.

Found him!

In the spirit of #RadicalHonesty, I should admit: Zephyr misread "Boing" as "Bowling" and was checking that drawer because that's where we keep his plush bowling set. But y'know, whatever. It got us to the right point, the birthday bears were reunited with their respective bed mates, and we were able to have a fabulous Detective Training session with little to no prep. Everyone walked away happy.