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.
Girls Playing Music
Follow the attached link to get to podcasts of the girls playing violin (J) and piano (S).
http://www.switchpod.com/users/tikasmom/feed.xml
The one entitled "SydsCompositionWinterSolstice" really is S's original work...she's got it written down on sheet music and entered into Music For Young Children's Composition Festival Contest. I think it's pretty nice!
J is motoring her way through the first book in her Suzuki program. She's scheduled to play her newest, Long Long Ago, at a solo & ensemble type event in March.
http://www.switchpod.com/users/tikasmom/feed.xml
The one entitled "SydsCompositionWinterSolstice" really is S's original work...she's got it written down on sheet music and entered into Music For Young Children's Composition Festival Contest. I think it's pretty nice!
J is motoring her way through the first book in her Suzuki program. She's scheduled to play her newest, Long Long Ago, at a solo & ensemble type event in March.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Early Reflections on Blogging
After getting a good, although short, sleep, I find myself thinking about the experience of starting this blog. Since one of the goals of this blog is to capture my efforts to learn new technology, I guess I'd better write down my thoughts!
The process of setting up this blog was amazingly easy. Blogger is a free Google app. I clicked on "create blog" and then followed the set up wizard that got me up and running very quickly...10 minutes or less. Unlike some other Google apps, I wasn't required to have to have a Google email (gmail) to use Blogger. Before I created my blog, I did a bit of doodling on paper to determine the name of my blog and the types of stuff I plan to document here. Blogger will easily allow my blog to evolve over time, but it was helpful to have put some thought into it before I got going...creating the title and description are part of the set-up wizard.
I've been looking at some of my friends' blogs that are also hosted by Blogger, and a couple of them don't follow the template format...they've added very cool sidebars that I'd like on my blog. I suspect that figuring out how to change the template will take longer than 10 minutes.
I've read that people can make money blogging. This is part of Web 2.0 that I don't understand! It must be from advertising, but an economy based on web advertising feels a bit bubblish to me.
Writing, is, as always, time consuming. At least for me. The "compose" screen is not too different from a regular word processor...it even has a spell check feature! But, it's also not quite as robust as a program like Word. It seems to be particularly cumbersome to get the big picture of what a post will actually look like on the blog. Anyway, regardless of the interface, writing takes time...time that I often don't have, so I suspect that this blog will be infrequently updated after the newness of it wears off.
I wonder, too, about the safety of posting information online. I've changed some settings so that it's unlikely that people I don't know will stumble upon this blog...and, I think I could make it completely private, only showing it to approved "friends". I have the same concerns about sharing information on Facebook, LibraryThing, and Ravelry. But, I'm intentionally trying to find the line between sharing too much and sharing enough to make the tool useful. It's an experiment, because someday in the not-too-distant future, my girls will want to do all of these things, and I need to understand the benefits and the dangers.
So far, I'm finding it quite exciting to be learning about Web 2.0...and a little astonished. Where have I been that I didn't realize just how far this stuff had been developed in such a short time? Oh yeah...moderating arguments between my twins!
The process of setting up this blog was amazingly easy. Blogger is a free Google app. I clicked on "create blog" and then followed the set up wizard that got me up and running very quickly...10 minutes or less. Unlike some other Google apps, I wasn't required to have to have a Google email (gmail) to use Blogger. Before I created my blog, I did a bit of doodling on paper to determine the name of my blog and the types of stuff I plan to document here. Blogger will easily allow my blog to evolve over time, but it was helpful to have put some thought into it before I got going...creating the title and description are part of the set-up wizard.
I've been looking at some of my friends' blogs that are also hosted by Blogger, and a couple of them don't follow the template format...they've added very cool sidebars that I'd like on my blog. I suspect that figuring out how to change the template will take longer than 10 minutes.
I've read that people can make money blogging. This is part of Web 2.0 that I don't understand! It must be from advertising, but an economy based on web advertising feels a bit bubblish to me.
Writing, is, as always, time consuming. At least for me. The "compose" screen is not too different from a regular word processor...it even has a spell check feature! But, it's also not quite as robust as a program like Word. It seems to be particularly cumbersome to get the big picture of what a post will actually look like on the blog. Anyway, regardless of the interface, writing takes time...time that I often don't have, so I suspect that this blog will be infrequently updated after the newness of it wears off.
I wonder, too, about the safety of posting information online. I've changed some settings so that it's unlikely that people I don't know will stumble upon this blog...and, I think I could make it completely private, only showing it to approved "friends". I have the same concerns about sharing information on Facebook, LibraryThing, and Ravelry. But, I'm intentionally trying to find the line between sharing too much and sharing enough to make the tool useful. It's an experiment, because someday in the not-too-distant future, my girls will want to do all of these things, and I need to understand the benefits and the dangers.
So far, I'm finding it quite exciting to be learning about Web 2.0...and a little astonished. Where have I been that I didn't realize just how far this stuff had been developed in such a short time? Oh yeah...moderating arguments between my twins!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
A Fun Cabin Weekend
As stated earlier, we spent the weekend at our cabin with a friend from college and two of her kids. It was a great winter weekend: we got about 6" of fresh powdery snow after we all arrived. The kids spent about 8 hours outside on Saturday sledding and exploring and using the frozen lake as a super-highway to large snowdrifts and areas around the lake that are harder to get to when the water isn't frozen. In between times outside, they played Wii together...often quite intently. Lego Indiana Jones was a favorite, and even the grown ups got into Guitar Hero.
Parenting Twins: It is Different
Ever since my daughters were born, I've had experiences that highlighted for me that parenting twins IS different than parenting singleton siblings...even if those siblings are relatively close in age. Some of these experiences I was prepared for, because I read about them in a book that someone else was kind enough to write. And, many times, I've just had to shake my head in awe and wonder (or despair) as I've been totally unprepared. At these times, I've thought to myself: "I should write a book about parenting twins." Well, THAT's never happened...but maybe with the ability to blog, I'll at least have the chance to record my observations...maybe the book will come later.
And, then, sometimes I don't even know that what I'm experiencing as a parent of twins is unique! After all, my girls are my only kids, so I have absolutely nothing to compare it with. This past weekend, I got a glimpse of one of these unique situations: My daughters argue. I know you're thinking that this is not that unusual...all siblings argue, and parenting experts Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish have written an excellent book about helping make sure those arguments don't turn into life-long hatreds: Siblings Without Rivalry. I've always figured that my daughters' arguments were no different than any other sets of siblings. But, I realized this weekend, with the help of my college friend Amy's non-twin children, that the nature of my daughters' arguments are vastly different and more complicated for one simple reason: there is not an older one to be dominant just by virtue of being older. As I observed Amy's daughter and son have disagreements over the weekend, I was struck by the observation that when an argument of theirs reached an impasse, the younger child capitulated. And he was not a meek, shrinking violet child by nature; in fact, he struck me as having a healthy dose of stubbornness and persistence. He simply deferred to his older sister when it seemed that the argument had no place to go. He just knew his place in the family hierarchy: below that of his sister. When you know where you stand on the totem pole, you learn early on to pick your battles wisely! My twins don't have that out. S's 40 minutes on J aren't enough to give her the authority to be "the big sister". They are both equally dominant in their eyes, and that makes it all the harder for them to learn to resolve differences. I think they'll be better people for it when they're older, as they will have had to learn the tough conflict management skills like compromise and consensus. In the meantime, though, I'm feeling a little bit sad for all of us: the girls experience endless difficult conflicts of their own making every day without an easy out...and all of the grown ups in their lives constantly have to be on the ball to help teach them the skills they need to use to resolve them. It's exhausting for everyone involved! If nothing else, this weekend with Amy's kids gave me a little insight into why my house often seems like a non-stop escalating battleground. I'm still undecided about whether this insight will make this aspect of parenting easier or not. Stay tuned!
And, then, sometimes I don't even know that what I'm experiencing as a parent of twins is unique! After all, my girls are my only kids, so I have absolutely nothing to compare it with. This past weekend, I got a glimpse of one of these unique situations: My daughters argue. I know you're thinking that this is not that unusual...all siblings argue, and parenting experts Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish have written an excellent book about helping make sure those arguments don't turn into life-long hatreds: Siblings Without Rivalry. I've always figured that my daughters' arguments were no different than any other sets of siblings. But, I realized this weekend, with the help of my college friend Amy's non-twin children, that the nature of my daughters' arguments are vastly different and more complicated for one simple reason: there is not an older one to be dominant just by virtue of being older. As I observed Amy's daughter and son have disagreements over the weekend, I was struck by the observation that when an argument of theirs reached an impasse, the younger child capitulated. And he was not a meek, shrinking violet child by nature; in fact, he struck me as having a healthy dose of stubbornness and persistence. He simply deferred to his older sister when it seemed that the argument had no place to go. He just knew his place in the family hierarchy: below that of his sister. When you know where you stand on the totem pole, you learn early on to pick your battles wisely! My twins don't have that out. S's 40 minutes on J aren't enough to give her the authority to be "the big sister". They are both equally dominant in their eyes, and that makes it all the harder for them to learn to resolve differences. I think they'll be better people for it when they're older, as they will have had to learn the tough conflict management skills like compromise and consensus. In the meantime, though, I'm feeling a little bit sad for all of us: the girls experience endless difficult conflicts of their own making every day without an easy out...and all of the grown ups in their lives constantly have to be on the ball to help teach them the skills they need to use to resolve them. It's exhausting for everyone involved! If nothing else, this weekend with Amy's kids gave me a little insight into why my house often seems like a non-stop escalating battleground. I'm still undecided about whether this insight will make this aspect of parenting easier or not. Stay tuned!
Karen Has a Blog? Really?
Those of you who know me well are probably astonished that I've created this blog. For someone with an engineering degree, and a general appreciater of technology from a distance, I'm a relative Luddite when it comes to adopting the stuff myself! I'm a fan of more traditional forms of recreation and communication: reading, playing outdoors, knitting, meeting people in person. Video games and even TV have never been able to catch my attention for long. And, alas, marrying someone from a different state, moving to a new state, and raising active twin daughters have pretty much determined that there will not be as much "meeting people in person" as I would prefer. All of this has happened in stages over 15 years, and I've adjusted as time went on (email is an excellent invention that I adopted without hesitation!), but still I have preferred less technologically oriented pursuits. When my daughters turned seven this past year, this all changed. Just about over night, we became owners of DS Lites, and a Wii. I got a Facebook account...and actually use it! I'm learning how to podcast for a volunteer project. And now it's time for blogs. Why? Two reasons: The first was that I had the realization that all of this stuff was here to stay and I couldn't, in good conscience, keep my kids from it. Knowing how to use this technology and participating in current popular culture will be important for their growth, development, and sense of self as they grow older. And, I'd rather have them learn how to use it appropriately from me than from their friends. Which means I'd better know how to use it myself! The second was that I have an amazingly talented friend whom I've known since about 5th grade who recently authored a book that explained the Web 2.0 technology to me...and now it's not so scary any more. In fact, the possibilities for expressing myself and keeping my multi-state family and friends in touch with my family are downright exciting. Check out Kristin Fontichairo's Podcasting at School to learn more about Web 2.o tools and get excited yourself!
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