Gamification

27 February 2012

Clean, clean, clean. I feel like all we did today was clean. That's not entirely true though. After we had most of the cleaning out of the way we practiced skip counting by 3's. Ra has 3-30 down pretty well but seems reluctant to want to learn the rest up to 99. Eldon is hardly interested at all. I need to figure out funner ways to teach them. I have been using a video from Have Fun Teaching for the skip counting but it counts too fast and the kids loose interest because they can't keep up. We will keep working on it. I broke out in bouts of counting by threes throughout the day to try and spark the interest in it again, but each time the kids asked me to stop ofter counting to 30 for the third time.

After our initial skip counting session we watched some science videos on YouTube. They were interesting enough to keep the kids attention but because they were kind of random subjects I'm not sure it really did any good. They much prefer the hands-on science activities like we did with electricity the other day.

After the science videos we bundled up and went for a walk around the neighborhood. I reviewed with Ra that house numbers on one side of the street are even and on the other side they are odd. We looked at several house numbers along our way to see if the right side was even or odd and so on. We also had fun naming the colors of things we saw on our way in German. They are getting pretty good with their colors!

After our walk we had some hot chocolate to warm up and within the hour the hubby was home and we left to take care of some errands. While we were out our fan belt on our vehicle shredded and we had it towed in to the shop and obtained a rental car for a day or so until it is fixed. The kids where practically beside themselves with excitement at watching the tow truck load the vehicle and then being able to ride in the tow truck to get our rental. They thought nothing better could have happened to them today.

By the time we got home the kids had all fallen asleep in the car so no story time again tonight, though they did spend quite a bit of time listening to the audio version of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

After the kids were in bed I found this fun, new background for my blog for St Patrick's Day coming up then browsed around on Pinterest. I found a video about "gamification" and it's affects on kids and adults alike. It was very intriguing and though I understand what he is saying, I don't think I agree with it completely.

I don't doubt that we can learn immense amounts through video games, however, having been a gamer for nearly ten years I have experienced the effects that the studies can't possibly test. I lost myself in the games. I wanted to be there more than in my real life. The dopamine affects can be just as hazardous to our well being as any other dopamine based addiction. Games can not possibly replace the one-on-one time with your kids.

They may learn skills and information from games, but they can not learn about tact, right and wrong, love, honor, etc. Those things are taught in the home, by the parents. And the acquisition of these character traits is most important to me. I do believe my kids need to be taught as much as they can learn, but not at the expense of their moral character.

Relaxing Sunday

26 February 2012

Today was an uneventful, relaxing Sunday. We went to church, cooked, cleaned and ate. We also watched a fair few NOVA movies. I worked a little on that cover art I was asked for, practiced some German and just hung out with the kids today. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. It was nice. I hope your Sunday was a good one too!

P.S. After consulting with the hubby we decided to stick with German as our first language and go back and do Latin after we have German down pat!

Electrical Gardens

25 February 2012

This morning we had breakfast then went (with the keys this time!) to get my husbands paycheck and we ran a few other errands on the way home. Ra listened to and read along with the read-along books we checked out from the library. I went over some of the facts of George Washington's life while we were in the car as well. I read them a few poems about George Washington that I had found online as well. I also started introducing the kids the the colors in German. Rot, orange, gelb, grun, blau, lila, schwarz, weiss, braun, silbern, and golden. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, brown, silver, and gold.) Time in the car has been greatly under-utilized by me and I hope to remedy that with exciting discussions and topics and books to listen to and memorization drills.

We had lunch and cleaned house a bit when we arrived home and after lunch the hubby pulled out an electricity science project kit we had bought for our kids a while ago but had not opened yet. I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I sat back and listened to the hubby explain what a "circuit" was to the kids and how electricity works. I put in my two cents now and again when I felt I had an insight I could share or another way of explaining something that the kids might be able to understand easier. We all had a good time with it.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon planning my garden and doing research on how much to grow and where to grow certain plants in relation to other plants. I decided which plants I want to start with this year, instead of jumping headlong into a large variety garden my first year doing one on my own. While graphing out my garden on graph paper I explained to Ra what a Ratio was. I told her that for every two squares on my graph paper that showed one foot in actual garden. I told her we do this most often to scale down things into workable sizes. I couldn't very well draw out the garden on a piece of paper as big as the garden because then I may as well just do it in the garden itself. I still have a lot of planning to do, but this is a good start.

After a very good dinner the kids played around and Ra helped tend Em while the hubby and I set up my computer with Call of Duty 4 so that I could play it with him for a bit. It was fun to just chill and take a bit of time to relax from the studies I have been involving myself in during my spare time. Unfortunately the play time ran over and we didn't have time to read our kids a story before bedtime. But I was able to get in some valuable leisure time which I have been needing, but having been allowing myself. 

The kids and I also finished the Log Cabin out of twigs we started yesterday. I will post pictures of it soon. I absolutely love how it turned out.

Schedules, Hats, and German

20 February 2012

I managed to get my week planned out at about 1:30 a.m. last night/this morning. It includes basic ideas and guidelines for each of my three older kids in each subject, (reading, history, math, writing, science, art/music, German). This was no small task. I hope this gets easier as time goes on because it took me nearly all day yesterday to get this figured out and written up. It is well worth the effort, but I just hope it isn't always going to be such an enormous task.

Our day today was planned as such:

Ra-
Reading- A book of choice (read by self or by momma)
Writing- Notebook entry; penmanship
Arithmetic- Principles of Numeration #2
History- Ask Ra what history she wants to know.
Science- Review the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- Drawing with momma.
German- Review "nein, ja, bitte, etc."

El-
Reading- I See Sam book 9
Writing- Notebook entry
Arithmetic- Count to 100. Principles of Numeration #2 (with Ra)
History- Ask El what history he wants to know.

Science- Introduce the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
German- Review "nein, ja"

Ca-
Reading- "A, a"
Writing-Learn to hold a pencil; write name in capitals
Arithmetic- Counting to 10.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

This morning we ran out the door at 9:00 a.m. thinking we had some things to take care of at the bank this morning and as we pulled up we had to bury our faces in our hands and say "What is all our planning worth if we don't remember holidays!?" Being Presidents Day the bank was of course, closed.

We had another errand to run which required us to drive an hour to get there and an hour to get back. Ra had brought a book with her that she had started reading while we were getting ready to leave. The book was Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli. She almost finished it but had to stop because she was getting motion sick.

 I did not ask her to read a book and so this is a new development for her. I have only been reading to her and haven't been asking her to read anything. The reason for this is that she had been told too often that she is a slow reader in public school and so she hates reading. I have been reading stories to her though, and not just simple kids books.I read her chapter books so she can understand why a person would want to read such a long book by experiencing it without having to go through the effort herself. This will hopefully spark that desire to know what is on the next page. I believe the fruits of this effort are beginning to show forth by this act of reading a book on her own today. I am so excited!

While Ra was recovering from her motion sickness I used the time to ask her and El if there is anything in history that they are interested in or want to know more about. El isn't familiar with most any history at the moment but Ra said she wants to learn about the Statue of Liberty, Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Appleseed, and China. Since Ra is getting into the Love of Learning phase I think I will just have El listen in on our discussion and what not so that he can start to pick up on things he will be interested in pursuing in a couple years.

We reviewed skip counting by 5's and 10's while in the car as well, but mostly my husband and I talked while the boys teased each other in the back seat and Ra kept asking us to turn up the German music we had in the CD player.

After we returned home not much was done by way of the kids education until my husband left at 3:30 p.m. But while he was there I introduced him to LiveMocha, a language learning website that I found. I am going to use it as a primary resource for learning German. We told the kids that when they learn German well enough to hold a conversation we would take them to Germany. Of course, that means we need to learn it too! I think this is an excellent example for the kids of self driven learning. If you want to know something, search it out, don't wait for a teacher to hand it to you covered in worksheets and quizzes. 

For about an hour after the hubby left I let the kids watch some of the learning song/videos from Have Fun Teaching. They spent the rest of the day as they liked while I made dinner and took care of Em until 7:00p.m. when we read in Genesis of the KJV Bible and we read 3 chapters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We are 6 chapters from the end and have made a goal to read 3 chapters a night so we can be finished in 2 days to be able to have a discussion about the book with Nana Lori via Skype.

So I didn't get to everything on my schedule today, but tomorrow is another day and hopefully with less distractions. It is computer day, and I have at least planned for that and planned my "lessons" around this event!

Heritage in Transylvania

24 January 2012

We read some more of Dracula by Bram Stoker. Based on the passage we read these are the activities we engaged in.

• Learning the German alphabet letters and the sounds they make.
• Located Transylvania on a map.
• Discussed the descriptions of the way people dressed.
• Looked up the recipe for Mamaliga and Impletata to have for breakfast tomorrow.
• Discussed punctuality.
• Looked up the meaning of various words such as missals.
• Talked in brief about levees and floods.
• We talked about twilight, dawn, dusk, sunset etc.
• We discussed what it is the siege a location.
• We talked about the fact that we have maternal lineage from Transylvania.
• We watched some tutorials about beginning family history searches.

Today was also our Free Computer day, each kids was allowed 2 hours of screen time to play on their favorite flash games websites. All in all not a bad day, but maybe not as productive as yesterday. I will finish up my reading of A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Demille and then I will print out the pages I will be needing from my PDF copy of The Checklist by Cindy Downes. After tying up a few of these ends our lessons will be a little bit more focused.