parenting

Oh YAY! It’s another school day…

/ Marjorie Sanpietro / Leave a comment

It’s Tuesday morning and we are sitting at the dining room table where we do 90% of schoolwork. The boys have copy books I make them to practice their handwriting and vocabulary/spelling books. They HAVE them but they are not writing in them. They are discussing/playing with a fidget cube. Daniel actually redirects and starts – Aaron is cheerfully non-compliant. Less cheerful when I get involved.

The cat is scratching up my new chair for the umpteenth time. I have a super-sized Little Mermaid mug filled with hazelnut coffee and pumpkin spice creamer.

The chair destroying perpetrator. He’s lucky he is such a pretty cat.

Today is still better than yesterday. I was struggling with my insomnia and couldn’t get myself moving until 2:00pm. Guess that was a sick day, folks.

After our writing and vocabulary practice – we are going over a growth mindset series from Khan Academy. That’s been a win – the kids have been asking about it – and I’ve heard them reference it in conversations with me and between themselves.

Daniel will probably work on his Native American project first – we’ve beaten this subject like a rug – and I had such high hopes for it. Aaron is going to work on fractions. He soaks up new math work like a sponge. We learn a new concept very fast and then we go and review old ones.

And we’re still working on writing, while discussing how no one slept while last night.

More screwing around…

I overestimate my patience. God bless teachers everywhere.

Aaron is chanting “Albert Einstein” and has taken 25 minutes to write 3 lines of text. The dogs are wrestling like lunatics in the living room but at least they aren’t snacking on cat litter or chewing my boots. Small blessings, y’all.

Aaron’s copy book – I make these semi-weekly with quotations, sayings and jokes. The kids at least sort of enjoy it – if they like what they are copying.

Daniel is re-writing Christmas songs and loudly singing his creations. Aaron just needs to write “Einstein” and WE CAN MOVE ON. So as slowly as possible with letter by letter updates is the way he’s choosing to go.

Then he threatens to erase it – and my first lovely swear comes out.

Is this a scene you are familiar with?

Later, Aaron and I spent an hour on building a Lego ice castle. He just wasn’t in the head space for sit-down and write work. We got through it – a battle at a time – but I always have the nagging feeling that we could have a better day.

Daniel worked resolutely – but he takes his time – he gets very distracted. I was pleasantly surprised and a little gratified when he self re-directed. I didn’t have to say a word! I’m still working to help them be more independent learners. Today, Aaron actually used a word book to look up spelling while writing in his journal. Small wins.

I didn’t know why I started chronicling our morning but I like how it ended up. I guess the point of this is that each day is made of good, great, not so great and just plain bad moments but the bad moments are worth the good ones.

Tuesday started like a hurricane – ended a little stormy – but there were some really great moments that I don’t want to forget.

How I’m Organizing Our Homeschool

/ Marjorie Sanpietro / Leave a comment

It’s not pretty. In all honesty, I have about 3 days mapped out so far. I want to see how we do and what is working for us.

My homeschool space doubles as our dining room. We have two bookshelves dedicated to homeschool materials. I recently put up a small whiteboard and bulletin board set. I’m using these to keep info that we need every day. I’ll probably write the date on the whiteboard to help us all keep track.

Each of the kids have their own binder where I am keeping supplemental material and where I hope they can store their work. I also have a binder – it’s pretty rudimentary right now. I have a copy of each IHIP and a calendar for keeping attendance. I also have a place for my daily plans. I have been scratching them out on looseleaf paper organized by subject for each child.

I plan on using the internet extensively for material to fuel hands on learning. I’m really excited about science experiments, demonstrations, and projects. I have a ton of recycables and basic art supplies on hand.

I reviewed their IHIPs and started looking at the resources I’ve accumulated. I have started what feels like a small library – not that we didn’t already have one – but I purchased some workbooks and went through the books we already owned looking for non-fiction I could use for different subjects. I found out that we have a crap-ton of dinosaur books.

I felt that we needed an easy start so I used their Brain Quest workbooks to jump start our first few days. I like these because they help me to see what I need to cover in each grade level. I’m using these as a guide and a starting point for topics. We are going to be covering each topic in more depth and according to my child’s individual needs. For instance, my second grader is a developing reader. We are going to use the first BQ worksheet on digraphs as a starting point and continue practicing them throughout the week. I am going to accomplish this with worksheets I found on Pinterest. We’re also doing that with math. We are going to be working towards better understanding of the hundredths place value so we’ll study that for about a week.

I am going to cover some topics with both my 6th grader and 2nd grader. We’ll be doing a coordinated study of U.S. History dating from immigration across the Bering land bridge to… however far we get. We will also be doing Art, P.E. and music together. Music isn’t even a required subject but I think it would be terrible to miss so I’m on the hunt for some materials. In lieu of having a solid plan for Music, we’re going to start with classical composers.

I am excited and nervous about that first day. I’m not planning on jumping into lessons right away. I am going to use the first day to get them excited. We’re going to name our homeschool, talk about how we learn best, make lots of slime and maybe go on a walk. I want to find out what they want to learn about and do so I can incorporate that.

Buttermilk Falls (Ithaca, NY)

/ Marjorie Sanpietro / Leave a comment

Buttermilk Falls is in Ithaca, NY near a busy shopping area. Our trip here was Eh…

We stayed Wednesday night to Friday morning due to campground availability – weekends are heavily booked at the state parks right now. I overheard a park employee describing it more like a city park and while that didn’t feel exactly true, it was funny to see store building tops from our walks. I imagined sneaking away to Starbucks a couple of times (especially on Thursday when I had the boys alone).

I could have made it a little better with more planning – like calling the park to see what was going to be available.

Swimming will be available starting July 4th and is only open on Fri, Sat, and Sun. We went on July 1st – 3rd. The bathrooms are not open in the lower park until sometime in the late morning as far as I can tell. The ones in the campground are closed from 11-12 and 4-5 for extra cleaning. I know most of this is because of COVID-19 precautions so I can’t really complain.

The campground was nice but very stony. We bent our stakes trying to get them in the ground and sort of worried about our tent caving in or a strong wind blowing it away. It did not blow away. We appreciated that the site was shady and near the bathrooms.

We definitely did some hiking – going from the campground to the lower park entrance twice and back via the Owl Creek trail. We also hiked to the scenic overlook via the same trail. It’s amazing! You can see across to farms on the other side…of something šŸ¤£ (maybe Cayuga Lake?). Near the overlook is also a huge rock wall presumably created by glaciers which people have signed by scratching their names with a rock. That’s where we saw our first snake. We saw our second snake on the portion of the Rim trail that leads to the park entrance. I had the boys make a list of everything else they saw.

  • lots and lots of chipmunks – these guys were everywhere!
  • squirrels
  • several different varieties of butterflies
  • frogs and tadpoles (learn more about frogs here)
  • dragonflies

It was a hot few days – we kept hydrated and took lots of breaks when we needed to.

Another hiking option is the Rim Trail/Gorge Trail loop. These are two seperate but connecting trails – currently they have them operating in a loop due to COVID-19. They describe them as fairly challenging so I didn’t attempt without another grown-up but I saw other families doing it.

Other nice things to do included a playground and large playing fields. My 6 yr old gave the playground two thumbs up!

The park was beautiful and I would visit again on a day trip during the week. I’d camp on the weekends if it was available.

Amenities: fairly nice camping, swimming, bathrooms, hiking, playground, large picnic area, ball fields

Rating: ā˜†ā˜†ā˜† 3/5

Pokemon Go fans: We didn’t have a chance to play! But I checked a map and there doesn’t seem to be any pokestops or gyms at this park.

Get Your Game On! or How I Turned Our Summer Around with Gamification

/ Marjorie Sanpietro / Leave a comment

I was worried that my kids were going to be spending too much time on electronics this summer. I had let them have free reign for a few days and they began to look like little zombies. In response,  I made a daily to-do list with time for electronics scheduled in after they completed what I thought were worthwhile activities including time for play. 

We had a few good days with it and then we were all sick of it. I felt like an enforcer and the kids felt nagged. Neither of those feelings were what I was going for. 

Then I changed my perspectiveā€¦

My main goal was to keep them busy and off the electronics. It wasnā€™t to micromanage their day. Inspiration finally struck at 2 a.m. the other night.

Photo by Lucie Liz on Pexels.com

I turned their day into a game or ā€œgamifiedā€ it.

Google says gamification means ā€œthe application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.ā€ 

An article titled Gamify Your Life from entrepreneur.com says that playing a game can trigger intense emotion and winning brings a great deal of satisfaction to a person. This is due to neuro-chemical activity in the brain including dopamine – which produces the sensation of pleasure. If you organize your to-do list to include pleasurable activity when you complete other tasks – you are starting to use this concept. You would be teaching your brain to associate completing those tasks with enjoyment.Ā 

That accurately describes my new approach. I took the same to-do list and turned it into a menu of activities they can do to earn points. The points can be used towards time on the television and game systems. This is another important component of gamification.Ā  Entrepreneur.com cites Tom Chatfield who did a TED talk – one of his points was that every bit of effort should be rewarded.Ā 

The kids get a visual reminder of their point earnings because I am handing out poker chips as they complete things. I assigned higher values things that I especially want them to focus on. Everyday simple tasks that can be done in less than 5 minutes are worth less. If they go through a simple morning routine of getting ready each day – they can earn their first 40 or so points. It sets them up for success and even their minimal efforts are rewarded.Ā 

There are some other elements that are covered in both the TED talk and the article that I havenā€™t incorporated yet – so Iā€™m going to be thinking about it. One that I think will require deeper thought because I find it very important is the incorporation of both long and short term goals. 

Applying the principles I covered here was easier than youā€™d think. I feel that the most important element is the point system. However, I think the visual appeal will turn out to be important as well:

If you compare these two lists – which is more fun and exciting? I feel like I threw a smiley face on the first one at the last second to save my butt. Iā€™m really proud of the second one – I tried to find more exciting fonts and came up with a cool title!Ā 

My kids are highly competitive – so I had to lay some ground rules fast. I told them that this game is about their own personal growth and that they should not brag about or compare points.

If you want to try it – here is the list I made! Get Your Game On!

If you want to try gamification in your own life – I recommend Habitica. You have a little character and they level up when you complete your daily tasks, to dos, or complete a habit you want to adopt. There are pets to collect and you can level them up too. It’s a to-do list that’s fun for grownups!