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Essentialism – Kids’ Education + Extra Curriculars

2014-08-18 07.50.23

The podcast actually tackled school and extracurricular activities in two separate posts but both due to attention span issues and number of things to talk about/crossover, I’m talking about them together.

What we say NO to

  • We say no to a whole lot of extra work … both during and outside of the school year. The kids have enough to do for school and we have enough to do outside of school that it just can’t be a priority so you won’t find us doing much in the way of flash cards or workbooks to keep our kids “ahead of the curve.”
  • We say no to basically any activity that requires a ton of weekend commitment, or really just too much time commitment period. We don’t really do organized sports because of this.We want to be in control of our weekends, not sitting on the sidelines.
  • We say no keeping an activity that’s run its course due to guilt.
  • We say no to worrying too much about how a travel-related absence will effect the kids’ schooling.

What we say YES to

  • We say yes to reading outside of school.
  • We say yes to initial time commitments – for example when Tabby wanted to take up the violin, we told her it had to be at least a 2 year commitment if we were going to buy the instrument, not only for the capital outlay but also to really develop some proficiency in it and see if she likes it.
  • We say yes to “forcing” some activities because they’re important. Swimming is the one I’m thinking of here, but there might be others.
  • We say YES to finding activities that are low impact on us. A piano teacher who comes to us was about the top criteria for choosing our piano teacher. Fortunately, she’s also awesome.
  • We say yes to activities that aren’t necessarily our thing but that the kids adore.
  • We say yes to limiting activities in favor of family time.
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Raingutter Regatta

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Being as that I am a girl with no brothers, I have little experience with the boy side of scouting. Which is actually part of what makes Ben’s Boy Scout events so much fun. It’s lots of new stuff.

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For the uninitiated, like myself, the Raingutter Regatta is the maritime equivalent of the Pinewood Derby. You build a boat, paint it, make it a sail and race it in rain gutters against your fellow scouts.

We (of course) discovered that this event was sooner than we’d thought on Monday right after Matt left for a business trip (that wouldn’t have him home until today), so I got tasked with turning the rectangular wooden piece and dowel we were given into y’know … boats.

Fortunately, I have been paying attention during shop time. And I was able to complete the task with little fanfare.

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The kids painted them and off we went.

DSC_6322Ben competed against fellow Wolf Scouts and Tabby was in the “family” (mostly sisters) bracket.

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It was a double elimination tournament (I learned how those work yesterday), and both kids won their first 2 races and lost their third.

DSC_6360Which netted them 3rd place in each of their brackets!

DSC_6365Not too shabby for our first go. More importantly, they had a great time!

 

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Family Meeting #3

2016-05-23 20.09.39Monday marked Family Meeting #3.

This one was a little different as we had a family photo shoot right in the middle of prime family meeting time. We tried so hard to protect this, but the photo shoot had to be moved because of weather and the weather made us do it. Argh.

So photo taking was our activity.

We also 1) paid allowances, 2) went over the summer goal chart, 3) had cookies, 4) played Machi Koro

All in all, a good meeting. Next go-around I want to implement gold stars and I want to come up with a rotating system for picking the fun activity (from a list) and the treat (same).

 

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Family Meeting

NicholsFam

A few weeks ago, I told Matt that I wanted to start having regular family meetings. I said I wanted to have an agenda and a family credo and snacks. This is exactly the variety of corny/cheesy stuff that Matt instinctively rolls his eyes at and internally GROANS. We’ve both been through way too many corporate team-building sessions with mission statements to be wary of this sort of thing and I get it. But to his credit, he heard me out.

I made the following argument: The kids are getting older. School, activities, friends, devices, etc. are encroaching more on our nuclear family and while that’s not wholly bad, it’s important that we are deliberate about protecting family time. We need to also be deliberate about communicating what values, activities, lessons, etc. are important to us and teaching the kids a few things. To his credit, he saw what a fabulously great idea it was and got on board. 😉

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Lessons

2014-02-23 09.56.07

I owe the interwebs (read: me, for posterity’s sake) a recap and gush on my newly-minted FIVE YEAR OLD. But the photos are stuck on my camera and I have been recovering from our crazy weekend. Who woulda thunk a weekend at home would have put me me even more behind on everything?? Oh well!

But for now I just want to share an experience we had with the kids last night. Matt and I have lots of discussions about parenting. We’re like any parents, just trying to raise good happy citizens, I suppose. We’ve been talking off and on about how we will help them acquire the mundane skills for completely unsexy things like bill paying and budget keeping and I think we both rather thought it was a ways off. And yet … we had to stop by the pet store last night for hedgehog litter and treats (mealworms) and we found an earlier opportunity.

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A Snowy Recap

We have been skiing with the kids for over 4 years now, since Tabby was shy of three years old! It’s incredible to think it’s been that long. Skiing with little kids is NO JOKE. It’s at very least cold and frequently snowy and windy. It’s a grueling thing for an adult to get everything he needs into place, suiting up and carrying ALL THE GEAR where it needs to go, let alone a kid. We usually end up carrying ALL the gear to save sanity. That combined with traffic and ridiculous expense frequently made us question our sanity for pushing the issue.

BUT we saw glimpses of how worth it it could be as Tabby got proficient, but then we had to do it all over again with Ben. We had a couple of family ski days last year and earlier this year that were borderline disastrous. My boots got left in Denver and I had to wait in a ridiculously long line to rent some while Matt wrangled the kids. The drives were horrendous. We had a drunk screaming in the hall when we stayed overnight. Ben WOULD NOT LISTEN. At one point last year I was so fed up with equipment carrying that I consigned the lot of our skis to a ski valet for some ridiculous price just so I didn’t have to carry them a couple blocks.

And then, this past weekend, it just clicked. Ben can suddenly ski. And not just the easy slopes that bore the rest of us, but some pretty awesome terrain. Intermediate slopes, through trees and over bumps. He (mostly) listens. He is enthusiastic. He is excited. It was FUN. The good snow and equally good weather helped, no doubt, but it was great. Matt and I took him up for a solo day with Mommy and Daddy on Saturday and then the whole family, Papa and Gaga included went with us on Sunday. We were up for hours and really really enjoyed ourselves.

Back in January when my sister and I were up for a ski day with just Dad, I thanked him for teaching us to ski. It’s a sport I truly LOVE and so I really appreciate that he took the time and energy and money to teach us and I think I’ve always appreciated it at some level. But it’s only now that I’m a parent that I fully realize the commitment it took to getting two little girls up on a Saturday morning and onto the slopes. And while I’m sure my mom played her part, probably in getting gear ready and undoubtedly other ways, it was always Dad’s thing to take us skiing. That’s a pretty awesome dad.

And I’m more than glad to be able to return the favor for my own kids. Hopefully they’ll be skiing with me into my 60s.

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What I’m Digging

After a really wild ride the past few months (moving, traveling, strep throating, skiing), I feel like we’re finally getting into a new normal. We ate at home last night! I went to the gym this morning! Our house isn’t full to the brim with boxes!!

agathaI need to do a big ol’ post about my amazing kids, but for now, I thought I’d share some of the things we’ve been digging on – like this excellent series of books about a pint-sized sleuth called Agatha Mistery. She and her cousin, Dash, jet all over the world, solving mysteries with the butler Chandler and cat Watson in tow. They meet up with various family members of the Mistery clan who are sprinkled all over the world. They’ve got a few pictures here and there which satisfies Ben and both kids beg for another chapter every night. There are 4 already out and 2 more to follow this year!

unicornAnd while we’re on the subject of kids’ books …. I find recommendation for kids’ books online various places and then I will get on our library’s website and order them up. I got a really good batch a month or so ago and of the 10+ books we got, three of them made the “buy them!” cut. Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great is the story of a goat who is just a bit jealous of a new student in his class, Unicorn, who has garnered the attention of all. You won’t be surprised to learn that Unicorn envies Goat a few of his traits and they work things out. Great dialog, fun pictures and great for reading aloud.

journeyJourney is just a beautiful book. There are no words. The story, about a little girl and her imaginative adventure, is told through beautiful illustrations. Ben loves this because he can “read” it all by himself.

crayons quitThe Day the Crayons Quit is probably my favorite of the bunch. The story is an airing of grievances from a little boy’s crayons told in the form of letters to the boy from said crayons. Great idea, really fun and colorful illustrations.

wall caddyThe rental house is actually proving to be pretty functional for all of us. We don’t really have any space for a dining table, so the kids are eating at their picnic table in their bedroom and Matt and I are eating standing up or in the living room on the couch or at the desk. Once we sell, we plan to bring our coffee table over so we can all eat together, but for now, it works! We also need plenty of organizing things to keep everything where it’s supposed to be. I bought this great organizer to get our keys and papers and that sort of stuff, all where it needs to go. It is great for now and will be super cute in our mudroom. Now I just need to get the minions to hang it.

parenthoodGot a half marathon in less than 2 months. Guess how much I’ve run in the past month. Practically nothing, nil, zero, zip, zilch. I’ve been too busy skiing and moving!!! So now I have to get my butt in gear. We were able to take our treadmill with us to the new house, but it is in a tiny, kid of weird, auxiliary room that you have to leave the main house and go around back to get to (although it’s technically attached to the house). So while we have a treadmill, no TV. But happily we live in the streaming TV age and so we are not even getting cable anymore and I’ve used a few of the dollars we’re saving on cable to get some TV to watch on my ipad while I run. Parenthood, Castle, Two Broke Girls, Elementary. It’s an amazing world we live in!

vmarsAnd last, but definitely not least, Veronica Mars, The Movie is in theatres March 14. You better believe I’m getting there ASAP and in the meantime, re-watching the series.

 

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Weird Science

1About 13 years ago, I met Matt at Vanderbilt University. We actually had a couple of classes together, but we didn’t know that. We actually met each other because we were both part of a volunteer organization called “Vanderbilt Students Volunteer for Science” where we would take cool science experiments into Nashville inner-city schools and get the kids revved up and interested in science. That’s where we met and the rest, as they say, is history. But throughout our time at Vandy, we were always involved with VSVS and when Tabby started school, Matt wanted to bring some of the magic of science to her class. So he took the most favorite VSVS lesson plan about states of matter and adapted it to kindergarteners. This lesson plan hinges on the use of dry ice and liquid nitrogen and he found sources for both in Denver and got permission from her teacher and principle and then took his show on the road.

Well not quite. First, we had some friends and their kids over for a trial run. It was a success and he learned some things … more importantly, our friends loved it!

3So Matt and I went to Tabby’s class last Friday to give the states of matter lesson.

7First he taught them all about atoms and the states of matter (in a kindergarten level way of course). Here they are being a cold solid, all huddled together for warmth.

4Then he demonstrated changing matter from one state to another, first with water (an ice cube melting in your hand) and then with CO2. He let dry ice melt into a balloon and fill it and then he poured liquid nitrogen on it to

2Re-freeze it. We cut the balloon open to show the kids the dry ice dust.

5We froze lots of things… like a flower an a banana. Matt showed the kids how to hammer a nail in with a banana. You can do it if you freeze it rock solid first. The big finale was ice cream making. At school we used the kitchen aid mixer to keep from having to stir and stir.

6At home we used a bowl. Either way, this is about what it looks like: kinda soft servy. But very tasty.

The kids had fun and I honestly think they learned quite a bit. Tabby had retained most of what she’d learned from the demo at our house and I heard some other kids talking about the different states of matter. It was fun for us too and I know Matt would love to give it another go!