Making Memories, Being Fully Engaged

This weekend the kids and I watched Courageous and I got the message. So often I am present, here with my kids but not fully engaged. I can not tell you how many times I have heard their stories but not truly listened. How many times have my kids asked to play a game and I replied, "not now, but maybe later." Translation: Probably not going to happen. I hope those aren't the memories I am making as a parent. Today, I decided to do something out of character. Once I decided my house was "clean enough," I grabbed a Nerf gun and got involved in a Nerf War with my kids and the neighbor kids. I wish I was able to catch a photo of my son's wide eyes when he saw me appear with a Nerf gun, ready to play. I did capture a few shots and hopefully made a positive memory. Hopefully I will remember to do this more often as this is the most important job I have...shaping my children's lives and future.

Watch The Mommy Memory: Nerf War Surprise

Notebook 11: A Teaser...

So looking forward to the enhanced features in SMART Notebook 11 which releases in Spring 2012. Check out the video and let me know your thoughts...Click Here!

APPealing to youngsters (& oldsters :))...

APPealing to children on both ends of the exceptional child bell curve, Dr. Seuss Band allows creativity, concentration and a bit of competition for your higher achieving students. When working with an austistic child earlier this week he began to track the colors and length of the note with one hand. Next we will work to incorporate both hands. It's a fun app and allows multi-touch for exploring.

Check out this application on the App Store:

Dr. Seuss Band
Oceanhouse Media
Category: Games
Updated: Jan 03, 2012
208 Ratings
Game Center

Happy APPing!

Team Building? Try this...

The Human Knot
From Carl Spruill , spruills@bellsouth.net

Warm teams up with the "human knot". Tell team to stand in a circle facing each other. Reach across with your right hand and grab the right hand of someone who is not standing right beside you. Reach across with your left hand and grasp the left hand of another team member but not of the same person whose right hand you are holding (confused yet?). Tell the team, "You are now in a human knot. Your challenge is to untangle yourselves by stepping over or over someone else without letting go of hands." This takes lots of teamwork and cooperation and also gets both sides of the brain thinking. Kid's love it!

For a little twist, do not allow any talking.

For more ideas Click Here

Transforming Typical Flat Stanley Project

Here is the link to the paper copy of the worksheet sent home

Because Andrew also has less than legible handwriting, we saved this worksheet to One Note by right clicking and selecting Send to One Note. Here he could confidently type his responses, include a link to the movie and insert a photo. We saved the final document as a PDF and he emailed the attachment to his teacher along with a link to the movie.

Andrew had a great time coming up with a unique idea for Flat Stanley. He spent all afternoon devising a story line, Saving Stanley. With a little bit of help we transformed a static worksheet into a project that came alive right in our back yard! Check it out teachers and let us know what you think...Watch the movie by clicking here

He is 8. And for the first time in a long time he was engaged in his learning. Actively engaged. It made my heart smile.