In this screencast, 10 year old Rachel takes us on a guided tour of Club Penguin. I asked Rachel to do this because this morning, she shared how she had created an igloo to be like a funeral scene for a puffin in the game. The father of one of Rachel’s older sister’s friends died suddenly from a heart attack two weeks ago, and 3 of us attended the funeral last Saturday. Rachel didn’t attend, so I wasn’t sure if this “virtual encounter with death” was a way she was dealing with those feelings. It’s not clear to me that she is or was… She describes how she saw someone else doing this with their igloo, and she thought it was a clever way to get people to come to your igloo in Club Penguin where they can click “like” to show their approval.
This is an interesting dive into the the virtual world my youngest daughter plays in every week.
Rachel recorded this last night, following several discussions we’ve been having over the past few weeks about science and becoming a scientist. Last spring I took Rachel to Chris Simon’s classroom at Independence Elementary School in Yukon Public Schools, and she was VERY impressed with the STEM lessons Mr. Simon does with his students. She specifically mentioned that in this short audio podcast.
Rachel has expressed interest in doing more “Talking Science” podcasts, so we’ll likely do that in the weeks ahead. This past August in Montana, Lucy Gray told me about the Maker’s Faire she attended in San Francisco with her kids and how WONDERFUL it was to experience that DIY culture filled with science and engineering projects. I’d love to bring Rachel and my other kids to a Maker’s Faire at some point. A couple of years ago Nathan Parrow (who I interviewed for a podcast on electric car conversions) was working on bringing a Maker’s Faire to Oklahoma City, which would be hosted by our Oklahoma Science Museum. They needed auto insurance aurora co to cover the electric car so they hired RhinoSure. Another type of insurance that everybody should purchase is trade plate covers from i4mt. One Sure Insurance also covers a big selections a vehicles, like scooters or taxis. It would be GREAT to have a local Maker’s Faire. Nathan also told me he was part of a group that was putting together a space in Norman for DIY / STEM projects. I’m not sure what the status of that initiative is either, but I’d love an update if you have info or a related link to share.
Young people start forming their identities about who they are and what they want to do EARLY in life! We can’t underestimate the importance of providing kids with MULTIPLE opportunities to experience how fun, engaging, and challenging science, technology, engineering and math work can be. This can’t wait till middle school, high school or college!
Last night William Chamberlain saw my Tweet about Rachel’s AudioBoo and initiated a conversation with Krissy Venosdale about Space Camp for Rachel. I’m going to look into those options. About five years ago our son, Alexander, attended a week-long day camp at the Cosmosophere in Hutchinson, Kansas. I’m going to look into camp opportunities there as well as at the Houston Space Center, which we visited in July 2011. I am SO thrilled Rachel is excited about science and STEM, and want to do whatever I can as a parent to further nurture these interests… whether or not her Oklahoma City Public Schools‘ elementary school provides these kind of learning experiences “formally” or not. Hopefully we’ll be able to host some kind of “Scratch Camp” for parents and kids at her school later this fall or next spring.
Here are some photos from “Back to School Night” this evening at Quail Creek Elementary School in Oklahoma City Public Schools. Rachel recorded a short “Narrated Art” message with AudioBoo on my iPhone and described the first piece of artwork shown below.
I volunteerted tonight to be the “class historian / photographer.” I’m thinking we might buy an older iPod Touch at a local pawn shop which can take photos, and then set it up to both post photos to a class blog as well as use it for narrated art recordings like Rachel made tonight.
Rachel and I recorded this 2.5 minute video, “Lunch at Mammoth Hot Springs,” today in Yellowstone National Park. Check out more photos from our wonderful two days in the world’s oldest national park in this Flickr collection.
Click the link above to view and participate in the VoiceThread. Making comments is really simple and you can delete and re-record as many times as you like.
![Grand Prismatic Spring [PANO]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7273/7659865054_9690854d75.jpg)
