Author: Dad
A nightly spelling bee for Dad
I’m glad Alexander is in the midst of a writing assignment for school, but I honestly feel like I’m having to compete in a nightly spelling bee with all the words I’m being asked to spell now in the evenings.
It has been abundantly clear to me for several years that Alexander has similar spelling abilities to his mother: Spelling is very challenging for him. I think this stems from him not being as visually oriented in his natural learning style. I am a pretty decent speller, and I think that has a lot to do with my ability to visualize words. Even when he is asking me to spell words for his writing assignment, I have to visualize them in my mind to spell them aloud. I MUCH prefer to write down a word than to spell it out loud. Really, spelling bees are such a DUMB idea, I wish they were not so common in schools. The ability to verbally spell a word upon command is not an important “life skill.” Of course it is important to write well with correct spelling, but being able to do that is very different from being able to succeed at oral spelling exercises.
Don’t bother me Dad, I’m on Club Penguin
This was of the more notable scenes around our house this past Christmas break which I had to photograph. Rachel was playing Club Penguin.
Rachel set her protective blanket (to fend of the bright rays of the sun) herself.
Technorati Tags:
games, online, clubpenguin, club, penguin
Rachel’s writing and drawing skills developing
It is amazing to see how fast our 5 year old is growing up. Last night before Rachel and I watched the movie “WALLE” together, she drew the following picture on our living room whiteboard. If you click on this image and view it on Flickr, you can read the annotation notes I added with Shelly’s help. These explain what the different parts of the drawing are, according to Rachel. She is showing a great deal of attention to detail here, and also starting to try drawing in three dimensions instead of just two.
Rachel REALLY enjoys using our family iTouch and my iPhone whenever she can, and this morning spent some time watching part of the first Harry Potter movie in the living room.
During the morning, Rachel (who is 5 but has not started kindergarten yet since her birthday is after September 1st) wrote the following note to her mother:
In case you can’t read all the words, here is the text:
Dear Mom:
Do not mess with my movie.
Love, Rachel
We can see Rachel is not yet getting the idea that text is written and read from left to right and top to bottom, but this is her best effort writing to date I’ve seen. This is great work developmentally for her age, I think.
Even more amazing than seeing her attention to detail in drawing and writing, however, is hearing her observations and questions. During WALLE, for instance, she asked me if our earth ever WAS really “like that.” (All full of trash.) We had a discussion about pollution and our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth, keeping things clean and working to pick up trash.
She had lots of other good questions during the movie which I don’t remember now. I love the movie WALLE. Like all other Pixar movies, it has important themes which are big but also simple, straightforward messages that are easy for anyone to understand. The love story here, and the journey WALLE and EVE take to eventually hold hands, is very touching. It was special to share this movie again with Rachel! How amazing we can watch a movie like this, which we own on DVD, anytime we want. That was not the case when I was growing up, before the advent of the VCR. My kids probably can’t relate to the idea that there was a time when we couldn’t listen to a song or see a movie with just a few clicks on a screen.
Technorati Tags:
walle, drawing, art, draw, write, writing, development
Cooking Sausage Balls on Christmas Eve
Little sister and I made sausage balls this afternoon and shared our cooking over the web via Ustream.tv.
The recipe we used for these sausage balls is available on last year’s post, “Sausage Balls: The Culinary Delight of the Holiday Season.”
Sister’s 2008 3rd Grade School Christmas Program
Sister participated in her 3rd grade Christmas program today at school. I apologize the video is a bit jittery, I was using our old camcorder. Periodically, after the tape I was recording to ran out, the camera shut off automatically and I had to turn it back on, so that is why the image freezes and the audio is interrupted a couple of times.
Technorati Tags:
christmas, program, ustream, oklahoma, edmond
Favorite Halloween Photos
We had a great Halloween party at home this evening with neighbors and friends, and enjoyed the lovely cool (but not cold) fall weather which was perfect for evening trick-or-treating. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the evening.
Brother and his flashlight in the yard after trick-or-treating:
Mom getting our little witch’s hair ready for the night!
Part of our crew of trick-or-treaters!
The jack-o-latern Trista and I made together:
Little sister and her friend visiting with grandparents in Texas over Skype early in the evening, before we left for trick-or-treating:
Technorati Tags:
halloween, photo, photos, 2008, pictures, party, fun
Sisters perform (dance) at football halftime
This week we attended our first Edmond Memorial High School football game on Thursday night. Both sister and little sister went to a Saturday cheerleading camp last weekend, and this week’s home football game halftime show was their opportunity to show what they’d learned. Are these girls cute dancers or WHAT?
Thanks to my flash-based video camcorder and Flickr’s relatively recent capability to support 90 second video flash transcoding and publishing, I was able to immediately publish these videos Thursday night before I went to bed, and the next day grandparents watched them! (I got feedback on the phone Friday.)
It’s the day of “publish at will” video, and here’s a great, constructive example of how these capabilities can be wonderful! 🙂
Now is the time to invest
I am not a financial expert, but what I do know tells me now is the time to invest in stocks. As panicked people flee the market, opportunities open for others. My stock recommendation today is Chesapeake Energy.
Natural gas power will be a big part of our energy future in the next 20-30 years, before hydrogen power becomes ubiquitous.
Here is an iPhone screen snap of CHP today.
A new month
Rachel has started October drawing pumpkins and noting we have started a new month! She is excited her calendar at school today will have pumpkins on it.
A Kansas Cracker Barrel
Cattle and WiFi at a Texas Rest Stop
I snapped these at a rest stop on I-20 westbound about 30 miles from Fort Worth. We didn’t see anyone with livestock on or off the grass! The WiFi was free!
Sunset
September 11th Flags
Classen SAS Open House
Brother and I are attending open house at Classen SAS in downtown Oklahoma City tonight, checking it out as a prospective school for him next year. Classen is a 6-12 school emphasizing the arts, and also offers an international bacclaureate (sp?) program.
