Where did March go??? One of the things I've been working on over the past month is helping the top readers in Mrs. Hansen's 2nd Grade class create a podcast. These 5 students worked together to share ideas for their section of the 'cast, individually wrote their own section of script, revised and edited their script (rather reluctantly, I must say), and then recorded and rerecorded their own section of the script until they were happy with how it sounded. We wrote the introduction and conclusion as a group, and 4 of the 5 volunteered to read a part of each. All in all, I think it's a fairly impressive piece of work from a group of 7 and 8 year olds!
I edited each recording and put them all together into one file. The Audacity program is astoundingly easy to use, quickly allowing the editor to delete sections of "ums & ahs" and cut and paste between files using the same shortcut keys found in MS Office programs. Very slick.
As always, follow this link to get to my podcasts. The Book Report file should be at the top of the list. http://www.switchpod.com/users/tikasmom/feed.xml
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Alzheimer's Prevention: The Memory Challenges of having Twins at School
When my daughters were in Kindergarten, they were in separate classrooms. (Whether to separate or not is an on-going challenge and will likely be the topic for another post.) Since Kindergarten, they've been in the same class, and I thought this was MUCH easier, as a parent. In separate classrooms, things like permission slips for field trips and requests for Valentine's Party food would come home on different days...without a name attached to it. The school folder would be emptied into my "to do" pile and days later, I'd get to processing this paperwork, and have no idea which teacher needed the form back! So confusing!
Now, I see that having daughters in the same classroom is not without its memory challenges. The girls' classroom is in the process of a geography unit using Flat Stanley. If you don't know the back story of Flat Stanley, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley. The girls and I worked together to come up with a list of people to which they could send their Flat Stanleys, and then divided the list between them. Seemed like a good method at the time. The trouble with twins...and maybe all kids of this age...is that if they're not competing or trying to outdo the other, they sometimes have trouble distinguishing whether they experienced something alone or together. When we determined the Flat Stanley list, this did not seem like a competitive activity, so they were content to know that between the two of them, they would be contacting 6 people around the world. Who got which person and which location didn't really matter that much, and certainly wasn't worth storing away in "separate" memory. Now, however, the teacher has unwittingly made the unit into a competitive activity: as information from around the world returns to the classroom, she has the student that sent that Stanley stand up in front of the room and read/show Stanley's adventures. S & J can't remember who sent to which person, so statements of, "It's not fair, all of her Stanleys have come back and none of my Stanleys have come back...when in fact, some of each have been returned. Naturally, they expect me to remember...because Mom remembers everything. As frustrating as that is, I figure that I'm creating new brain synapses everyday, and Alzheimer's won't be settling into me anytime soon!
Now, I see that having daughters in the same classroom is not without its memory challenges. The girls' classroom is in the process of a geography unit using Flat Stanley. If you don't know the back story of Flat Stanley, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley. The girls and I worked together to come up with a list of people to which they could send their Flat Stanleys, and then divided the list between them. Seemed like a good method at the time. The trouble with twins...and maybe all kids of this age...is that if they're not competing or trying to outdo the other, they sometimes have trouble distinguishing whether they experienced something alone or together. When we determined the Flat Stanley list, this did not seem like a competitive activity, so they were content to know that between the two of them, they would be contacting 6 people around the world. Who got which person and which location didn't really matter that much, and certainly wasn't worth storing away in "separate" memory. Now, however, the teacher has unwittingly made the unit into a competitive activity: as information from around the world returns to the classroom, she has the student that sent that Stanley stand up in front of the room and read/show Stanley's adventures. S & J can't remember who sent to which person, so statements of, "It's not fair, all of her Stanleys have come back and none of my Stanleys have come back...when in fact, some of each have been returned. Naturally, they expect me to remember...because Mom remembers everything. As frustrating as that is, I figure that I'm creating new brain synapses everyday, and Alzheimer's won't be settling into me anytime soon!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Playdates with Twins
I am convinced that the only way to have successful playdates at home with twins is to have two friends over. A friend of mine who has older twin girls suggested this to me years ago...she even believes in it so much that while she was an expat in England, she bought a mini-van to haul 4+ kids around, even though vehicles as large as mini-vans are not that popular in England! I've resisted the two friend playdate for a long time, mostly because it's hard enough to coordinate a playdate with one friend, let alone trying to find a time that works for two friends at the same time. But, over the past couple of months, I've somehow been lucky enough to coordinate a bunch of two friend playdates, and they've worked really well!
Before two-friend playdates, one or the other of my girls was invariably left out. At which point, she would find her way to me and spend the rest of the day whining and complaining. I would suggest some techniques for getting her included again. Off she would go to try, and much yelling and slamming of doors and stomping of feet would follow. And a few minutes later, usually the same girl, but sometimes the other one, would be flying into my arms with yet another tale of woe. Not only did I feel bad for the friend who was getting stuck in the middle, my daughters weren't having a lot of fun, and I was unable to get anything done...way worse than when it's just the two of them home for the day. Is it a wonder that I would go months between playdates???
Interestingly, these same friends' parents report that if both of my girls are at their house (so still a group of three friends, total), these same type of arguments don't occur. My theory goes back to the same dominance issue I discussed earlier: at home, the girls see themselves as equally dominant and both want to be in control. At a friends' house, the friend is dominant, and they're willing to do what she wants. Or, play by themselves with all of her cool toys, as was often the case at our former neighbor's house! And, maybe, just maybe, a little bit of the manners lesson of "please behavior better when you're not at home than you do at home" has sunk in. I suspect it's the dominance issue or cool toys ideas that are the root, though!
With a 2 friend playdate, the four kids actually play! Almost always all 4 together, and all afternoon, or all day, or even all through a sleepover, without fighting! I'm not sure I understand it, because the same activities that one daughter absolutely can't abide by with one friend over are often the same activities that all 4 girls engage in willingly. Whatever the cause, it's wonderful! I definitely would not have had the time to learn about podcasting and take photos of artwork this afternoon if S & J hadn't had two friends over!
Before two-friend playdates, one or the other of my girls was invariably left out. At which point, she would find her way to me and spend the rest of the day whining and complaining. I would suggest some techniques for getting her included again. Off she would go to try, and much yelling and slamming of doors and stomping of feet would follow. And a few minutes later, usually the same girl, but sometimes the other one, would be flying into my arms with yet another tale of woe. Not only did I feel bad for the friend who was getting stuck in the middle, my daughters weren't having a lot of fun, and I was unable to get anything done...way worse than when it's just the two of them home for the day. Is it a wonder that I would go months between playdates???
Interestingly, these same friends' parents report that if both of my girls are at their house (so still a group of three friends, total), these same type of arguments don't occur. My theory goes back to the same dominance issue I discussed earlier: at home, the girls see themselves as equally dominant and both want to be in control. At a friends' house, the friend is dominant, and they're willing to do what she wants. Or, play by themselves with all of her cool toys, as was often the case at our former neighbor's house! And, maybe, just maybe, a little bit of the manners lesson of "please behavior better when you're not at home than you do at home" has sunk in. I suspect it's the dominance issue or cool toys ideas that are the root, though!
With a 2 friend playdate, the four kids actually play! Almost always all 4 together, and all afternoon, or all day, or even all through a sleepover, without fighting! I'm not sure I understand it, because the same activities that one daughter absolutely can't abide by with one friend over are often the same activities that all 4 girls engage in willingly. Whatever the cause, it's wonderful! I definitely would not have had the time to learn about podcasting and take photos of artwork this afternoon if S & J hadn't had two friends over!
Posting Podcasts and Pictures
Now that I've posted the art pictures and podcast, I can reflect on the experience of doing so.
Posting pictures is frustrating. Some of them post in a strange orientation...vertical, when they should be horizontal, for instance. I can't figure out how to rotate them, although it must be possible...other Blogger blogs I've read seem to have all of the pictures looking good. I also don't seem to have a lot of control over the layout of the pictures in the post, plus, they seem to post bottom up. Now that I know that, I can adjust how I add them in the future, but it makes me wonder why a bottom up post would be the default...unless it's because blogs are read from bottom up. (This is a little strange to me, too. Nice, I guess, when you're reading them, because you know the most recent will be at the top. But, why not go the other way with the most recent at the bottom...and just have your aggregators point you to the bottom of the blog? The programming technology must not allow that.) Anyway, it is cool to be able to have a central location to post pictures and comments/backstory about those pictures all in one location for efficient sharing.
Posting the podcasts took some additional learning on my part. I'd hoped that I'd be able to post the cast directly on this blog, but that doesn't seem to be an option with Blogger, like it may be with other hosts. I tried a Google Gadget called Podsharing, or something like that, but couldn't get it to work...in fact, it caused my blog to hangup in mid-post. In the end, I had to go back to my handy dandy Podcasting in School book, and learned that there are a number of websites that will store one's podcasts for free. I tried out the first one on the list, switchpod, and got going on it easily, uploading all the files I wanted to within a few minutes. Then, it was just a matter of posting a link to my "podcast" (which I think of as an individual file; switchpod seems to think of it as a group of any number of files with the same theme) on switchpod. Cool.
Creating the podcast itself is amazingly easy. Once I learned that I needed to use two public-source programs called Audacity and LAME to edit (Audacity) and convert to .mp3 format (LAME), it was a piece of cake. Audacity makes audio editing as easy as editing a word processing document, allowing you to "cut" or "cut and paste" audio tracks. After the file is edited as desired, LAME is a one button click within Audacity to export to mp3 format. Couldn't be easier.
Posting pictures is frustrating. Some of them post in a strange orientation...vertical, when they should be horizontal, for instance. I can't figure out how to rotate them, although it must be possible...other Blogger blogs I've read seem to have all of the pictures looking good. I also don't seem to have a lot of control over the layout of the pictures in the post, plus, they seem to post bottom up. Now that I know that, I can adjust how I add them in the future, but it makes me wonder why a bottom up post would be the default...unless it's because blogs are read from bottom up. (This is a little strange to me, too. Nice, I guess, when you're reading them, because you know the most recent will be at the top. But, why not go the other way with the most recent at the bottom...and just have your aggregators point you to the bottom of the blog? The programming technology must not allow that.) Anyway, it is cool to be able to have a central location to post pictures and comments/backstory about those pictures all in one location for efficient sharing.
Posting the podcasts took some additional learning on my part. I'd hoped that I'd be able to post the cast directly on this blog, but that doesn't seem to be an option with Blogger, like it may be with other hosts. I tried a Google Gadget called Podsharing, or something like that, but couldn't get it to work...in fact, it caused my blog to hangup in mid-post. In the end, I had to go back to my handy dandy Podcasting in School book, and learned that there are a number of websites that will store one's podcasts for free. I tried out the first one on the list, switchpod, and got going on it easily, uploading all the files I wanted to within a few minutes. Then, it was just a matter of posting a link to my "podcast" (which I think of as an individual file; switchpod seems to think of it as a group of any number of files with the same theme) on switchpod. Cool.
Creating the podcast itself is amazingly easy. Once I learned that I needed to use two public-source programs called Audacity and LAME to edit (Audacity) and convert to .mp3 format (LAME), it was a piece of cake. Audacity makes audio editing as easy as editing a word processing document, allowing you to "cut" or "cut and paste" audio tracks. After the file is edited as desired, LAME is a one button click within Audacity to export to mp3 format. Couldn't be easier.
J's 2nd Grade Artwork
I got this idea from my mom: take pictures of artwork so that it can be preserved, and to highlight cool features of it. Since I was taking the pictures anyway, thought I'd post them here. The elementary art curriculum in Reed City is nothing short of amazing, and the art teacher, Mrs. Vicky Krantz, does an incredible job getting the kids to learn and recreate what they learn about.
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