Zephyr wanted to keep working on the BONE board game this morning while Lyric wanted to do detective training. So I hid four stuffed animals in the living room and gave Lyric clues to where they were by making quicker and louder beeping sounds the closer he came to an animal.
SELFGRADE: C-. I could've done a lot more with this, and I have previously. But with the kids ending school next week, I've got some big time senior-itis. And the video ended right before he found the teddy bear! Ugh.
Instead of doing today's scheduled detective training, Zephyr wanted to continue making our board game based on Jeff Smith's BONE. It's been sitting in a partially completed state for months... I think we started on it in September of 2015. So, yeah, he got me. Zephyr looked for the cards we had made already as I continued to fill in locations on the board.
Filling in the Rat Creature temple and Barrel Haven
Now we have the Eastern Mountains ready too! Coming along...
We're not close to being done with it, but progress is being made.
SELFGRADE: B-. Out of sheer embarrassment for letting this project linger so long. But the game is gonna be dope.
Today was a very special edition of Sweet Ninja Moves (where I drill the kids with martial arts training) because Zephyr is going for his first karate promotion this afternoon. So it's his last chance to brush up for it.
Lyric insisted on going first (since he came up with the idea to do sweet ninja moves as a morning activity).
Finding the right piece of paper to hit was tricky because every piece of paper in the house has a drawing on it (thanks to Lyric's mania for drawing Pokèmon) and they consider each piece special. But we finally were able to settle on a piece and practice:
Selfgrade: B. I think Zephyr is ready for the promotion, I got to tell him about getting back into guard stance after every punch, so mission accomplished. But I could have done way more if I prepared better.
EDIT: well, Zephyr had his promotion later in the day and NAILED THAT SUCKER.
So proud of him!
Today's morning activity was Cardboard Toy shop, where I make toys with the kids out of recycled cardboard and duct tape. School ends next week, and for their "spirit week" one day is Crazy Sock Day. And this year, ladies and gentlemen, Zephyr and Lyric will be the CROWN PRINCES OF CRAZY SOCK DAY. So today, we'll be making them crowns.
Step 1) half of a deconstructed box left in the recycling bin
Step 2) trim cardboard to long strip
Step 3) cut crenellations and fold down longer flaps
"Crenellations" are the little projections at the top of a castle. Props to my Kindergarten teacher Darlene Freeman for teaching me that.
Step 4) Fold along the grain of the cardboard to create castle shape
Step 5 involves sizing the shape to the child's head size. No pictures of that, yet, but here's what the rough prototype was looking like before we left for school:
Work in progress. I have crazy crazy socks I'm looking to unload.
SELFGRADE: A-. That castle shape is going to be big for the kids, I can feel it. These will served double duty as fashion and toy. Recycling!
Zephyr's 2nd grade class was presenting its months-long bird study today, so to celebrate we played animal charades where we each had to pretend to be a type of bird. I video'd two of Zephyr's...
i did a penguin (successfully) and a sparrow (unsuccessfully). Lyric tried to do some Pokèmon birds, but just ended up looking like a dodo. But it was pretty cool.
SELFGRADE: A-. Animal charades are easy, fun, require no prep, and teach kids about acting and animals.
A little twist on our normal treasure hunt this month... This time I based it on the current 'Escape Room' craze!
Yesterday I planted 5 antique skeleton keys (on loan from my wife's collection) and five clues in the kids' room. The cool thing I found when I did an escape room is that you had to discover what you had to discover to get out, so I intentionally kept the instructions to the kids pretty vague. I just told them there were five keys for the five "locks" on the door, and if they could find all five keys in under 30 minutes they could get a prize.
The five "locks"
And then I just watched as they went searching for the keys.
Let the scavenging begin!
I made sure to let them know how much easier searching would be if their room were more tidy (to drive in the importance of Mystery Elves day). After fruitlessly searching for five minutes, I gave them the clue to look in something green. They finally found the first clue in the toy treehouse, which led them to the first key hidden in the desk drawer.
Sorry for the blurriness, things were moving pretty quickly.
Around each key was a note saying where they should look for the next clue. Because this was an experimental format, I made the clues pretty straightforward (the one on the first key said "tea pot", for example, leading to a clue in one of their tea sets), but in future ones I'll make the clues trickier.
Lyric took the job of official key bearer.
The clue in the teapot led them to:
Ten clues makes for an exciting treasure hunt.
They searched pretty thoroughly through the Legos at first but found...
... The clue was taped inside the top cover of the Lego box!
This led to them making up a pretty cool sounding song together they called "Under Robots", but soon they spied the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots. Zephyr could lift up the robots from his bunk bed but he needed Lyric to reach the key for him while he did it. So they worked together.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my kids worked together to solve a problem. This is everything I've been working towards.
Lyric's hand reaching up for the key as Zephyr lifts up the robots.
Holy moley, I can't believe that worked so well. With the fifth key they escaped and each received 3 tiny Pokèmon toys:
Which I got off eBay for 12 and a half cents each, but y'all don't need to know that
SELFGRADE: A. I mean, yeah, the clues could have been harder, but hitting a natural "nuclear submarine" task? That is rare and special. It worked and it was fun and it thought them valuable lessons in how to work together. And they jammed on a funky song called "under robots"! That's a mega success.
Today was the kids' least favorite morning activity, Mystery Elves, in which I try to get them to clean up around the house by turning it into a game.
I was VERY unsuccessful in getting them to clean this morning. In fact, the kids kind of made things messier... Lyric has been somewhat obsessed making his own Pokèmon cards (which he calls "Pokè L" cards), and he made a dozen more while not eating breakfast.
Lyric's Pokè L output this morning.
But that's okay! It's all part of the plan... A plan which should become more evident tomorrow. Cliffhanger!
SELFGRADE: incomplete. See tomorrow!
Another day with no school, another day where it would be so easy to just blow off morning activities... But I managed to motivate a little and get something going.
It helps that the kids love Superhero Adventure. Normally I try to make Superhero adventure a game in which the kids have to work together to accomplish something, but today I just wanted to take it easy and play with the kids. They surprised me by saying they wanted to be villains this time, however...
Anatetar and Mr. L... Supervillains!
I went and got stuff to be a hero from their room:
Electro-Samurai... The hero!
The kids being villains kind of threw me for a loop with the playing... Was I supposed to let them win to make it more satisfying for them or defeat them so that the good guys win? I wasn't sure. So I just chased them around the house with rubber swords. That seemed to work okay.
SELFGRADE: B-. The kids had fun, but it wasn't really teaching them any real lessons. But then again, kids play to learn and all, so maybe they were learning? Regardless, the kids got to play with me at their level and I got to feel like I wasn't wasting the morning.
Teddy Bear School this morning, where the kids act as teachers to a class full of Teddy Bears. I'm going to try and let the pictures tell the story.
Setting up.
Taking attendance! From L to R: Bat Bear, Corduroy, Robear, Kuma, Pikachu, Charizard, Arctos, Arc, Tyrone, Fauxbear. Pikachar and Paddington, not pictured.
Pikachu is the smallest so Zephyr built him a special flight suit. Interesting since Zephyr is the smallest in his class.
Zephyr took the class through some Pokèmon cards. And before you poo poo the educational value of Pokèmon cards, consider that a good portion of the class WERE Pokèmon, so it was kind of like their cultural heritage.
Zephyr did an interpretive dance at one point for the class? Not sure what that was about, honestly.
Lyric brought in a blanket for choice time
These guys gathered on the blanket for dramatic play
Kuma played with blocks (and was joined by Pikachu eventually)
Arctics played with what was supposed to be Legos, but was actually a different kind of blocks
And then pretty much the rest of Teddy Bear School was the two teachers really getting into playing with the blocks. Class dismissed!
Selfgrade: B+. I just let this one happen, which is probably the right way to play it.
Awwww yeah! Juice Crew this morning! This is where I make a fresh juice with the kids while listening to old-school hip hop and teaching them breakdancing moves.
Today's Every Color of the Rainbow juice had:
Delicious and nutritious
I kinda blew it, though, because there was this monster beet in the fridge I forgot to throw in. But anyway.
This time I set up the juicer and let the kids do it all themselves, while I made vines and set them to Eric B. And Rakim's "Know the ledge".
wait a second... "Know the ledge"... "Knowledge"... Oh snap! I just got that, like 23 years later. Pretty deep, Rakim.
Anyway, the kids took the juice and served them to their mom, with a homemade note.
And then we took a moment to toast each other on a delicious juice accomplished!
SELFGRADE: B. The juice was delicious, but how could I forget that giant beet? Inexcusable. And again, no breakdancing. At this rate they'll never get their 10,000 hours! And in the world they're going into it's serve or get served.
When I wrote up this month's schedule I didn't quite realize that days the kids have off from school (like today) would be a great opportunity to test out what coding camp could be like. So I called an audible this morning and switched out veggie challenge to making a game on Hopscotch with Zephyr.
We made a "Food Fight" game and it was pretty rad. I wanted to have Z walk you through it, but we ran out of time... perhaps tomorrow.
SELFGRADE: B. A good first step into the world of coding, but I'd like to get Lyric more involved.
Yeah, I didn't even try this morning for whatever reason. I feel guilty and awful about it, like I blew an opportunity to do something fun with my kids in favor of doing something pointless. Which is actually what happened.
Well, I guess I also made a mix of Morrissey/Smiths songs about working and played it while I was around them in the morning? At least maybe I exposed them to some music? Man, I feel like that's grasping at straws.
But tomorrow is another day. I'm going to try and recall this feeling and let it power me to making tomorrow better.
Selfgrade: F. Get your head out of the clouds, Rob!
The kids were playing Pokemon with giant cards with each other this morning, and it was pretty sweet so I didn't feel too much pressure to get them doing today's morning activity.
But I felt like I would've regretted not doing anything, so I tried to see if I could quickly teach Zephyr the first few bars to "Peter Piper" by Run DMC. This YouTube karaoke video for it is really high quality (except for a few mistaken lyrics):
The degree of success in teaching Zephyr was... not so much.
Selfgrade: C. I barely tried, could've done a lot better. I like the idea of teaching him Peter Piper for Poetry for Prizes day, though.
Chess puzzles today!
Zephyr got a bunch of books at the Book Barn (the greatest used book store on planet Earth) yesterday and he really wanted to read them, so it was a little difficult getting him to take time out to do a chess puzzle. I promised him it would be quick. I had laid out the following problem from Bobby Fischer's book:
Play along!
Zephyr was black, and had to find the move he had to do to get out of check. It was a problem he needed to look at the whole board to figure out, but there was only one correct answer.
Nope, pawns don't move like that
Did you get it? It was moving the Rook over to interpose. It took a little time and focus, but Zephyr got there.
Afterwards, while Zephyr read, I quizzed Lyric on piece names (once again he got everything except the Bishop, the only two syllable chess piece) and started showing him how each piece moved. I said he'd like the Knight because it makes L shapes when he moves, like the first letter of "Lyric".
And then Lyric wanted to see how many pieces he could balance on an upside down Rook.
Selfgrade: B. It would've been nice to fit in a game with Zephyr, but it wasn't in the cards.
