Learning Signs

Rachel and Sarah had a wonderful opportunity yesterday to visit Tinker Air Force Base by Oklahoma City and tour a Boeing E-3 Sentry (AWACS) aircraft with the first all-female crew in the history of the US Air Force. The girls spent about ten minutes in the cockpit checking out the controls and asking questions of [...]

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Sarah gave two wonderful performances last night at the Poteet Theater in Oklahoma City last night for her winter vocal audition. Way to go Sarah! Her vocal instructor and coach, Jay Prock, wisely scheduled a short vocal audition prior to the musical performance of “The Wizard of Oz.” as a result they had a nice [...]

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Portsmouth, New Hampshire listen to ‘Portsmouth, New Hampshire’ on Audioboo I always like fall best you can eat juicy lobster from Atlantic waters and peppermint bark and blueberries and sea salt and vinegar chips and lots of seafood and hot chocolate and maple syrup at the town square and walk to the bonfire outside at [...]

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Recently I was going to a friends birthday party, but didn’t want to buy a card. I usually just make one out of paper and crayons. But I had some spare time so I decided to create a card on the Internet and print it out. I had no clue how I was going to [...]

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This evening Sarah and I digitized most of her elementary writing portfolio. I posted most of these directly to this blog via email, using a Posterous site, but did not share the following poem from 3rd grade as she remembered the game “Travian” which Alexander and I played for about six months. Listen!

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This video (just over five minutes long) was Sarah’s final presentation for her 5th grade enrichment class at Chisholm Elementary in Edmond, Oklahoma. She learned more about how cupcakes are made professionally and started a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, selling cupcakes. My apologies the audio is quiet in the middle of this video, [...]

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The 5th grade program at Sarah and Rachel’s elementary school is tomorrow, and Shelly and I were able to see the dress rehearsal this morning. This is a clip I took on my new Kodak PlayTouch Camera, of Sarah and Ali singing, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me!” The basic plot of the musical is [...]

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This evening was the 5th grade Colonial Living History Museum event at our elementary school. This is a major highlight for 5th graders, who prepare for weeks to dress and act like a character from the US Revolutionary War era. Our fifth grade daughter was Catherine Barry, known as the “heroine of Cowpens.” Our current [...]

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Sarah and Ali created the following three minute, narrated slideshow using Sonic Pics on my iPhone in the car today, reflecting on the SuperStart event we attended this weekend in Grapevine, Texas. Technorati Tags: christian, church, texas, superstart, weekend, preteen, grapevine

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Sarah and Rachel recorded this fourteen minute Cinchcast with me today discussing their initial experiences learning how to create with Scratch software from MIT. They discussed learning how to move Sprites, about costumes, loops, coordinate geometry basics, and more. Download Scratch for free from scratch.mit.edu. Scratch resources from my Fall 2010 undergraduate course, “Computers in [...]

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This evening Sarah recorded a new episode for “The International Cooking Show,” demonstrating how to cook Peppermint Fudge Brownies for a holiday potluck. The video is 7 minutes, 49 seconds long. This episode is significant for several reasons. First of all, it’s the first episode we’ve uploaded to a unique YouTube Channel for The International [...]

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I’ve published all the photos from the trip Sarah and I took to New Hampshire and Maine last week to a new Flickr collection. I still have more videos to publish, but it’s good to have all the photos online. I’ve found if I don’t share photos fairly soon after a trip, lots of other [...]

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We had a great time at Divine’s house for Thanksgiving this year! Technorati Tags: thanksgiving

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Sarah: One of my students created this excellent VoiceThread about stopping bullying. I thought you’d enjoy this and might want to share it with others. Technorati Tags: bully, bullying, education, ethics, school

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A nice thing that my church does is we have a concept called yellow cards. What you do is you get a yellow card and write either an encouraging word to ….. or write on the prayer chain. Also in the bulletin they have a special section just for the people who need prayer. I [...]

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We had some pretty good looking trick or treaters in our family this year! Rachel and I were in Manhattan, Kansas for Halloween. Shelly posted two photos of Sarah and Alexander in their costumes, so we were able to see them when we were in Kansas, even if we didn’t get to trick or treat [...]

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This video is an interview with Dr Brent Benkelman, as he supervised the final preparations of the 120th pig he’s cooked in his life. Brent co-hosts an annual pig roast potluck for friends in Manhattan, Kansas. See more photos from my Flickr set of this weekend’s festivities, which included the disappointing loss of KSU to [...]

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Each fall our family looks forward to carving pumpkins into jack o’lanterns in advance of Halloween. This year we did it pretty early in October, and unfortunately the weather was so warm the jack o’lanterns molded before Halloween! These were our creations this year! As you can see, lots of fun was had by all. [...]

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Sometimes the best photos are candid shots. These were a few pics we took in September on a Sunday when we went to Furrs downtown. I’d won a Furrs gift card and we used it well. Yum! Technorati Tags: family, photos, furrs

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Sarah just posted a new video to YouTube. It was created using SonicPics on Dad’s iPhone. You can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdjmpw0KXS0 http://www.sonicpics.com Sent from my iPhone

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Sarah’s 5th grade teacher asked her to write a letter about her academic performance and school behavior to her parents, as if SHE was the teacher.

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The 2010 Creativity World Forum is coming to Oklahoma City in two weeks. In advance of the event, Creative Oklahoma is sponsoring a Creativity Contest for Students, who are challenged to: … show us your creative ideas for improving communities, schools and businesses so that Oklahoma remains a creative frontier. We invite all forms of [...]

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We’ve got some good dancers in our family! And some brave kids! Check out lots more pics from Saturday’s fun at Frontier City’s “Fright Night” in this Flickr set. Also check out episode 5 of “The Zebra Print,” which Sarah and Rachel recorded LIVE from the top of the ferris wheel at Frontier City Saturday [...]

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Kudos to my mom who created (and purchased) the following video on JibJab. Happy Halloween! Did you know members of our family are so talented?! Technorati Tags: fun, video, youtube, halloween, jibjab

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This summer Sarah and Rachel wanted to start their own iCarly-style webshow, and decided to name it, “The Zebra Print.” I helped them register the domain name (www.thezebraprint.com) and get the site launched. We created a YouTube channel for the show as well as a Twitter account. Sarah selected the WordPress blog theme and made [...]

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