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September 8 - First day of Teddy Bear School

First day of school today, and (not so much by coincidence), first day of Teddy Bear school. The kids set up the classroom: 

Classroom setup

I did an Instagram story of the boys going over their lesson plan, but I still haven't figured out how to embed/save those things. An interesting development was that the top bunk has become a "teacher's lounge", where one of the kids go while the other is teaching.  

The teachers, with Lyric in the teacher's lounge. 

There was a roll call and then Zephyr did a math lesson where he asked various stuffed animals to do basic arithmetic. Notable: he asked them what 1 - 2 was, and he seemed to have an understanding about negative numbers from his coding work. Then he handed out imaginary pencils so the stuffed animals could do a writing assignment: 

Teaching writing

Then it was Lyric's turn to teach them science. He went into a diatribe about planting a seed.  

Teaching botany

Meanwhile, Zephyr sat in the teacher's lounge pretending to drink coffee.  

Not sure where they learned about what happen in a teacher's lounge. Clarence, perhaps

But then it was time for actual school! 

First day of actual school looks

Back in this thing! 

SELFGRADE: A-. It was pretty cool to see their lessons applied and in action. 

September 7 - Coding Camp

Well yesterday was Lyric's 5th birthday, and you know how we do... It's hard to say no to someone on their birthday. So long story short, the kids stayed up late (in bed at 9p) and, as always, were up early (5:30a). This made for tired and cranky kids this morning, which was sub-ideal for restarting morning activities. But restart morning activities we did!

Today was Coding Camp, and there was an exciting new video available on Hopscotch called "Subway Surfer", but Lyric was too cranky and fussy to sit for it. Zephyr made an attempt, but kept leaning on me, both to do certain steps of the coding for him and quite literally resting his head on me. I tried taking a candid photo of us coding together, but he found me doing it and tried to smile. I think you can get a feeling for his weariness from the photo:

Trying so hard to act natural. It's exhausting.  

We got about halfway through before Zephyr told me he needed a break. We'll try to finish it tonight.  

SELFGRADE: C. I blame myself for the sleep thing, but we tried doing something at least.  That was positive. 

An important lesson

Boy oh boy, blogging this summer has not panned out. The reason why is patently obvious to me: I simply cannot do morning activities with my kids if they're able to watch TV or play video games in the morning. I just can't compete with that when I'm tired and groggy, it's too easy a way out. I recognize that there's all these studies about raising creative children and setting rules, saying things like:

One study compared the families of children who were rated among the most creative 5 percent in their school system with those who were not unusually creative. The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule.

But, sorry, no TV in the morning before school has to be a rule if I'm going to do my morning activities. It's more to force me into action than anything else. Well, that and I'm going to lose my proverbial shit if I have to listen a few more times to the cycling commercials that constantly loop when nobody is watching the on-demand channel.

We'll start up the no TV in the morning thing again next week, when school starts up. Then hopefully I can get back on the blogging. Fingers crossed.

August 17 - Pokèmon Treasure Hunt

This was a kind of dry run for the kids birthday party activity next month. I tried my best to meticulously document all the prep work the night before on Instagram, so I'm going to try and let those pictures tell the story.  

Neatly organized materials used.  

Intro clue.  

Zephyr reading the intro clue that morning

Clue #1 was in the fridge behind the ketchup

Zephyr and Lyric puzzle out clue #1

Found the Dodrio in the tomatoes

The Dodrio and its clue led to our Spanish-speaking skull, Señor Cranio

Clue #2 was on Señor Cranio

They looked in the wrong Pee Wee lunchbox at first  

Eventually they found the right Pee Wee lunchbox, with Growlithe inside

Growlithe and its clue led to the sweater drawer

Clue #3 was in n the sweater drawer and led to the flower mug

Seel's rhyming clue led to under the dining room table  

Lyric found clue #4

Clue #4 led to the Zingo box

Zingo searching

Mew and its clue led to the treasure in the laundry bin

Deluxe Japanese screaming Meowth and scotch tape dispenser Jigglypuff were in the treasure chest

Victorious treasure hunters

The one thing I want to correct for: The kids IMMEDIATELY starting fighting over who gets what Pokémon. Hopefully at the party there will be SO MANY POKÉMONS that this won't be as much of an issue? We'll see.

SELFGRADE: A. Mostly for remembering to meticulously document everything on Instagram, that was a big step for me. But it worked well, kids solved the puzzles entirely on their own, it was straight-up thrilling.

August 4 - Veggie Challenge

Veggie Challenge day! The theme for this one: Greens! The rules were simple: I set down a small plate of green food and if the kids could eat them all in under two minutes, they win Veggie Points. At 350 veggie points they get a prize (Zephyr started the game with 155 points from previous challenges, Lyric had 100).

Parsley challenge! 

First round: Parsley for 100 points! they polished this one off quick.

Next round: Pear for 100 points! Also, they got through it fast. And then the next round was Garlic scapes for 200 points, but surprisingly they polished that one off so fast I didn't even get a chance to get a picture. They even asked for seconds! Good enough for a prize!

Pokèmon prizes! 

I gave them some pokémon toys I had previously had in my office. Went over big!

SELFGRADE: A-. Easy to do, got them eating veggies... everyone wins.

August 3 - Pokèmon drawing studio

Another quick and simple activity, where Zephyr and I learned how to draw Pikachu together. I think Pikachu is the height of the Japanese kawaii aesthetic, and I suspect he is geometrically designed to be as cute as possible. My proportions were definitely a bit off (especially in the head narrowness) as I was just eyeballing it, but I still think it turned out okay.

Zephyr working on his Pikachu next to mine

Some bit of knowledge I was able to impart: eyes should be far apart enough to fit an additional eye between them. That's rapidly becoming my gauge for how successful a morning activity is: did they get to learn something new you can point to? "Learn something new" is our family motto. 

SELFGRADE: B. Something new was learned! 

August 2 - Sweet Ninja Moves

A very abbreviated morning activity this morning, but still managed to get some stuff in... Zephyr showed me some "Jab/Cross/Kick" combinations and used them to break a board (by which I mean a piece of construction paper I was holding taut) and Lyric showed me how he could snap into guard stance: 

Eye of the tiger! Pajamas of the teddy bear! 

I got to give them a bit of quick little corrections (snapping back into stance after every punch, hands in front of you, kick higher, etc) and compliment them when they got it right, so it felt like they were learning something.  

SELFGRADE: B. As long as we're doing something together I'm satisfied. 

August 1 - Detective Training

Lyric has been recently attached to a stuffed green Stegosaurus he named Spikey, so when I saw he left Spikey unattended in the living room this morning I sprung into action. I hid Spikey and wrote out a note for them to find.  I wanted to give the kids a test where they would need to figure out a clue based on available resources, so I hid the clue in the instructions themselves. 

Can YOU crack the case? 

Zephyr read the note and immediately started piecing together the green letters. As soon as he said "Under hat", Lyric raced to the hats resting on our egg-shaped Karim Rashid umbrella stand. 

Too easy? 

They demanded another case to crack, this time also featuring Lyric's teddy bear Arc, so I sent them out of the room and wrote up a rhyming clue: 

And then I hid Arc under the brown glider cushion and Spikey in a black and white striped shopping bag.  

Zephyr read the clue on the brown glider and quickly deduced where Arc was.  

Quick turnaround at the Zephyr Detective Agency

But finding Spikey proved to be a little tougher... I kind of blame myself for using the word "cross" for poetic reasons. They hunted around the room, searching Chay's black and white Miyake bag and under the piano, but eventually Zephyr spied the right bag. 

More of a striping than a crossing, admittedly 

But they seemed to have fun, and for not a lot of work, it felt good to be back in the morning activity groove. Guilt assuaged. Back in the groove! 

 SELFGRADE: A-. Not too bad for a spur of the moment thing!

Fresh for August!

Well, we're back after taking July off!

Coding camp was kind of a bust, unfortunately... We were doing really well and then we updated Hopscotch and all the integrated videos went away, which threw off Zephyr enough that he lost interest. I would've tried hard to get him back in it, but since I just started a fresh new job, I fear my mind has been occupied with other things. That's no excuse, I know, but that's how it went. I've been in touch with Hopscotch and they're working on new videos as we speak, so we'll get back to coding really soon. 

We did do a few activities in July, though! The kids wanted a treasure hunt so we had another escape room, we (finally) worked out the back design to Zephyr's homemade Pokèmon cards, and we made a paper plate Doraemon mask to celebrate its return to TV... 

Really pleased with the craftsmanship here

I upped the challenge on the escape room, so I gave them an extra ten minutes, but they managed to get out

This month we've got a lot of fun in store! The kids are taking two week-long vacations with their grandparents this month, but we'll try out some fun activities in between. Some things to be on the lookout for:

  • We've been playing a lot of Pokèmon GO this summer as the kids have caught Pokè fever, so Superhero drawing studio becomes Pokèmon drawing studio on the 3rd and we'll (hopefully) be in a position to finally mount our Z-Me cards on the 15th.  
  • Teddy Bear School becomes Teddy Bear Camp on the 18th
  • Filmmaking returns on the 29th

Stay with us! 

Coding Camp, Week one

Back in it! It's been a pretty eventful hiatus... the big news is I got a new job at a great new place, but we also had an amazing time off in Niantic CT, discovered Pokémon GO, and did a bunch of coding!

The kids made their own lemonade stand and wrote fortunes and fun facts on the bottom of each cup. Take that, Snapple! 

Magic hour, July 4th, Crescent Beach. No filter.  

And we played so much Pokèmon Go that by the end they were totally blasè about walking past a Poliwag.

Zephyr has been amazing about Hopscotch, really motivated to make stuff. He's actually been doing it a lot on his own, like this little exercise where he built a little platform scroller that changed backgrounds when the character got to the end of the screen:

Because of... CODING! #MorningFunManifesto #CodingCamp

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on

He also made this joystick to control a character on screen, and it totally made me realize how complex the code for a joystick is.

This was a project he made that turns his finger motions into spiraling emoji. He also used this to make a cool spinning wave.

Zephyr's been working today on spiraling emoji while I was at work #hopscotch #CodingCamp #MorningFunManifesto

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on

And he's been trying to show Lyric how to code as well!

Zephyr teaching Lyric how to use Hopscotch  

The only problem is we just updated and now the system looks a little different, which threw Zephyr off a little. It's that same feeling when suddenly there's a new MS Word and all the buttons you were used to being in one place are now in another. I'm confident we'll overcome it. 

June 24 - Coding Camp Preview

I'm still trying to find a way to film what we do at coding camp, but I did come to an important decision last week about what coding camp (starting next month!) is going to be... Zephyr and I will work together to learn the Hopscotch programming language in order to make age-appropriate learning games for Lyric.  I'm pretty durned excited to get cracking on that.  

Today we worked on figuring out how to join emojis together to make "megamoji" to use in Hopscotch. It was pretty much what I thought it was going to be. It's something we're definitely going to use a bunch during coding camp.

Zephyr's megamoji. We worked it so when you tilt the iPad you move it, which is pretty sweet.  

Way more to come at coding camp next month.