Time Tracker!

This is my new favorite thing.   It’s the Time Tracker Tags.  These three separate timers run independently and automatically reset upon return to their slot in the base unit.  They have wrist straps attached and alert the wearer with both a tone and light that time is up.

We are using these things all the time.  Everything from homechool to time-outs, baking to timing showers.  With three timers in one, we can have all three going for different times at the same time.  Perfect for lots of kids with different things to time.

We’ve got the original Time Tracker as well.  This one gives warnings, both with audio and lights, that time is passing and will soon be up.  Perfect for my ‘distractable’ students who sometimes forget they’re on the clock.

They’re both a bit pricey for timers if you ask me… but a perfect item for parents and homeschoolers to put on the holiday wishlists!

From Being Weary to Seeing Clearly

Adrian’s been out of control for about 3 weeks now.  It’s been a rough. We think hormones are partly to blame. It’s been severe enough that we made the appointment to speak with the doctor about options.  He’s very unhappy and his compulsive behaviors are preventing him from enjoying the things he usually finds calming and relaxing. 

I was feeling awful weary from it all this afternoon when I picked Adrian up from school.  Then, through the mirror, I watched as Zee and Adrian played.  They shared a few cookies, they laughed and giggled.  They played games where only the two of them understood the rules.  Adrian’s communication device lay lifeless on the seat next to me, defeated by the blow Adrian gave it when he threw it through the air earlier today. Just another in the long line of things he’s broken in the past few weeks.

But these two brothers didn’t need words.  They played and laughed and understood one another perfectly.  They put their foreheads together and giggled at one another. It was a sight to behold and brought tears to my eyes. 

See, despite the shattered window, broken baskets, cracked cabinets, the destroyed faucet and the constant slamming of doors and drawers… despite all the difficulties of the past few weeks, I was reminded that it’s really not all bad.  Adrian is part of our family and we love him.  The essence of Adrian is still in there, even when it’s hidden by a storm of rage and sadness.

Hopefully we can find a way to help him through this rough spot.  But regardless what lies ahead, I won’t soon forget the image of brotherly love or the reminder about how lucky we are to have him.

Field Trip to the City

With my mother-in-law in town, we were able to take a field trip to NYC without Adrian.  He’s often overwhemed by it all so that we’re not able to take the other kids to do and see what they want to.

This was the first trip we’ve taken where Zee was really old enough to appreciate it all.  With that in mind, we did the usual tourist stuff even though the girls had been there and done all that before.

We started our day at the Museum of Natural History.  Zee loved the dinosaurs and the elephants.  However, he was completely flipped out by the bears.  Couldn’t stand to go near the polar bear, brown bears or grizzlies. 

Then we walked.  We walked around Central Park and after getting a bit lost, finally arrived at the Central Park Zoo.  Strangely enough, Zee had no trouble at all looking at the real, live polar bears.  But nothing beat  the penguins!  The look on his face as he watched them glide through the water was priceless.  He was much less interested in the feeding of the sea lions, but the girls enjoyed the show.

We stopped in the Disney store and FAO Schwarz.  We saw headquarters for Daddy’s job.  Zee decided the building was way too tall to go inside. Then we walked to Grand Central.  We took a short subway trip to give Zee a taste of it. Like most little boys, he thought it was cool.

Then we stopped in and got few slices of pizza. We ate on stools at the counter while watching the city life out the big front window.  With tummies full, we walked to Times Square where Zee was captivated by all the lights and signs.  We walked through Toys R Us and went on the ferris wheel.  As far as Zee is concerned, this was the highlight of the trip.

After walking all day, we were all pretty beat.  A quick cab ride back to the car and we were ready for the long ride home.  It was a great day!

Challenge of Motherhood

A few weeks ago it snowed, again.  The kids begged to go outside and play in it.  Besides the fact that I don’t understand why anyone would want to go out in the snow, I’m not a big fan of the bundle.  You know, where you take a child and add the extra sweater, a scarf, a hat, some mittens (or worse, gloves), the coat, boots…. whoops, forgot the snow pants, take off the boots and coat, put on the snow pants, put the boots and coat back on…..

Yeah, pretty much hate all that.  So when the kids beg to go out I try to think of a good reason why not.  This particular day the hubby was standing right there and caught me before I had a chance to think up a good reason.  He sorta laughed at me and, in jest, asked, “So why is it you became a mom again?”

Now he was just teasing me.  He does that on a regular basis. (Insert pity here.)  But his question caught me off guard as I suddenly realized that I didn’t have a good answer.  I suppose you’d have to have seen my mission statement and my mommy ‘business cards’ to know what a big deal this realization was.  This is my chosen profession. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do and how I do it.  But for some strange reason I never thought about or answered why I do it.

It took me a few days but I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a mom from the beginning because I enjoy a good challenge.  And what’s more challenging than motherhood?  To this day, I thrive on facing the challenges motherhood presents.  There’s nothing quite so satisfying as solving a problem or dilemma, finding new ways to make things run more smoothly, getting through a tough week, or watching the kids display some behavior that I’ve worked hard to teach them. 

The upside of this is that the reason I became a mom still exists.  The challenge isn’t going to go away.  I’ve heard it from many seasoned moms that the challenges don’t go away, they just change.  After 11 years in the biz myself, I’ve concluded that it’s indeed true. 

The downside is that it seeing my motherhood from this perspective really makes clear my deficits and why they exist.  Conquering a challenge requires proof that it’s been conquered.  So I tend to focus my time and attention on things that can be quantified, charted and analyzed.   Things that can’t so easily be measured tend to get less attention.  In particular, relationships.  

I could have told you before that relating to my kids on a individual, personal level is one of my weaker attributes as a mom.  But now I can clearly see why.  Perhaps that’s not such a downside.

Looks like the next challenge of motherhood is staring me in the face.  And you know how I love a good challenge.

Savory Sites for School

I recently added two new tabs to the girls homepages.

First there’s Chore Wars.  I think this site is brilliant.  And it’s free too!  I don’t know if kids who don’t play video games would get it or like it but since mine do, it’s a perfect fit.  The site gives parents an easy way to offer incentives for chores and more.  It’s completely customizable and easy to use. 

I’ve written before about how important I think it is to have kids helping around the house not for some great reward, but just because that’s what families do.  The goal is to have everyone pitch in to make our house a nice place to live.  Everyone helps, everyone reaps the benefits.   I still think that’s important and I honestly hesitated to initiate Chore Wars in our house because of it.  But the kids seem to have a solid handle on that message so why not have some fun?  I won’t hesitate to kill the whole thing if at any point they forget that the rewards are just for fun, not the reason we help out.

So being a homeschooling mom we didn’t stick to only house chores.  Sure, we’ve got the usual chores on there.  Everything form emptying the garbage cans to vacuuming, cleaning the litter pan to doing laundry.  But they can also get credit for doing a math worksheet or reading.  They can earn rewards for keeping complaints to themselves when they don’t feel like doing assigned work or keeping themselves in check when they get frustrated with something. 

They can also earn rewards for using the word of the day from this site.  It may not be fancy but I love how they provide complete definitions, example sentences and synonyms, or as I like to call them, bonus vocabulary building

So what rewards are the kids reaping?   Well, right now the hot commodity is bottles of Favor of the Father.  Collect 7 of these and you can play x-box with Dad for a 45 minute stretch without  the threat of having to share Dad or the x-box with your siblings. Other things they can earn include a private lunch out with Mom, a bubble bath in Mom’s big tub, weekend games on a school day, the chance to stay up late or the chance to choose your favorite dinner and help Mom cook it. 

And what rewards am I reaping?  Well, the girls have picked up a few extra chores above and beyond what they’re responsible for and that’s been kinda nice.  I also really enjoy thinking up names for all the monsters

How do they know…..

In general, I can’t complain about my kids’ sleeping habits.  For the most part, they all slept 6 hours a night or more during that first year and quickly went to sleeping 12 hours a night without a fuss.  None were night-wakers, we never had kids in our bed and for the most part, we’ve been able to keep everyone’s waking to reasonable hours.

But I still gotta ask.

How do they consistently know when it’s a school day (and make me shake them out of bed at 8am) and when it’s a day off (and wake me at 6:30 when I could be sleeping)?  It’s not just weekends either.   Today was a snow day and I didn’t tell anyone about it and Zee was still in to wake me at 6:30….. how do they know?!

MMORPGs

I found this post recently.  It’s an interview with a homeschooling mom who plays World of Warcraft with her sons.  As expected, the comments that follow range from supportive to nasty. 

I’ve recently gone back to playing Star Wars Galaxies, a MMORPG game similar to World of Warcraft.  My character is tailor so I spend a great deal of my time doing market research, thinking up new marketing strategies, dealing with customers, stocking vendors and calculating ways to increase my profit margin.

Playing as a homeschooling mom now, I find myself thinking about all the lessons that could be taught in this microcosm. Everything from economics to sociology concepts are represented.  Unlike most games where you simply have to figure out the rules or programming the software plays by, you’re dealing with real live humans who don’t always act in ways you’d expect. That adds challenge and interest to the game.

But it also adds safety issues.  Just like in real life, there are bad folks out there and I think it’s with good reason that games like these are rated for teens.  As much as they’d love to play and there’s so many good lessons there for them, I don’t think my 9 year olds are mature enough to handle meeting an unscrupulous person alone.

So for now we’re keeping them out of these types of games. At least until they’re old enough to pay the monthly fee for themselves

Home on the Web

We’re a family at home with technology. 

Naturally, the Internet plays a big role in our day to day life.  As the kids get older, it’s time for them to use this powerful tool as well.  But how to make it as safe as possible?

We tried built in parental controls but it made it impossible for the girls to visit all the great educational sites I wanted them to see. 

Next I made a Yahoo homepage so they could have easy access to the links we wanted them to stick to.  It worked ok for the girls…. but the short descriptions didn’t catch their interest easily so they tended to stick to a few sites they knew well.  It didn’t work at all for the boys who can’t read the descriptions anyhow. 

Then it dawned on me…. what we needed was a homemade homepage.  I whipped up a web-page for them which breaks sites down into categories like science, art, kiddie sites, math and language arts.  I included graphics to catch the interest of the girls and help the boys identify the different sites without having to read.  Even the 4 year old can now navigate his way to Super Why or Backyardigans independently.  No ads means less chance for a mis-click to lead them somewhere we don’t want them to go.

We still keep a close eye on them while they’re online, but the new homepage has made it easier for everyone to stay where they’re supposed to be. The Internet will never be completely ’safe’ and I’m ok with that.  I see Internet safety as just another lesson we have to teach them. A safe homepage is a good place to start.

123 Magic

A while back I was searching for tips on teaching to improve my homeschool classroom.  I picked up ‘1-2-3 Magic for Teachers’ (they also have a parent version) by  Thomas W. Phelan and Sarah Jane Schonour at the library.  I quickly read through it and kinda chuckled to myself at the absurdly simple recommendation they make.

When the child misbehaves, you simply start counting and when you get to three, inflict the consequence. 

My first thoughts were…

• I’d feel silly counting
• I already use consequences
• I wonder how much money they made off of books that tell us to count to 3!

But one day shortly thereafter I was considering certain behaviors we’d been trying to change for a few months without much improvement. I decided to give this silly little idea a try. 

Pass the ketchup.  I must now eat my words.  The darn thing works, well…… like magic.   Months later I’m over feeling silly, my consequences are more effective than ever and I fully admit these authors deserve every penny they made from these books. 

Fitness Tests in TX

I saw this article and I’ve just got to vent.

Ok, so now we need to ‘test’ kids’ fitness levels.  Yes, subjecting children to a skin fold test presumably performed by a teacher in a public school will definitely help us determine a child’s fitness level.  I imagine it will do wonders for their self-esteem as well.

My biggest beef is that a child’s health should clearly lie solely within the bounds of the parents, no?  Would adults stand for a law that required them to exercise for a certain amount of time each week?  So why is ok to let the government meddle with our kids’ health?  I think it’s just another in a long list of things parents pass off on schools.  The schools, not the parents, are responsible for teaching character, self-esteem, math, reading… and now health and fitness.

How do they support such an absurd law?  There’s a correlation between good grades and fitness.  Hmmm…. could that be connected to the correlation between caring, involved parents and good grades?  Naw!  It must be purely coincidence that the parents who are taking responsibility for their kids’ education are also taking responsibility for their health. 

I love how the article ends… this testing will help teachers design their curriculum.  LOL.  They need to be told the kids’ exact test results - each and every one of the hundreds they teach, in order to figure out what to do next.  I’m sure that will help.  Have you seen some gym teachers?  They could start by being good examples themselves!

If we’re going to have an absurd law to help these kids with fitness problems, I suggest we have all the parents come in and get fitness tested instead of the kids.  Those parents who don’t pass the test can then be required to all the ridiculous things this law expects of the kids.  I’m betting that would do far more for the health and fitness of the children.  It would also send the right message to the parents – this is their responsibility, not the school’s!