Our Family Learning Blog
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 night!
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city, edmond, oklahoma, oklahomacity, thezebraprint, frontier
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?!
Carving Jack O’Lanterns is a favorite family tradition at our house!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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 sidebar customizations, I helped her add a ClustrMap and add Feedburner chicklets. We published the first episode in June, but busy schedules have prevented us from publishing the rest. We still need to publish episode #3, which was recorded in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. For now, however, there’s three episodes for you to watch. It’s going to be exciting to see the girls develop their on-camera communication skills. (Some of us certainly have an apparent flair for the dramatic.) Enjoy!
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webcast, webshow, icarly, zebra, print, zebraprint, thezebraprint
This was a story Rachel created in Manhattan in September 2009. I took photos of the story pages this month over the Labor Day weekend and created this digital storybook using the free iOS app “Storykit.”
Sarah and Rachel enjoyed trying on Wildcat’s old Air Force pilot helmet today. 🙂
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Today at Union Station in Kansas City, the girls asked me to take composite photos of them doing cartwheels using Pano. The results turned out pretty good for a first try!
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city, fun, kansas, kc, cartwheel, pano, union, station
This afternoon my girls and I were able to have LOTS of fun with my sister and nephew, making art at Kaleidoscope in Kansas City. In these two videos, Rachel explains how she is making a puzzle, and you can see the puzzle cutting process.
This was some magnet art I created on the whiteboard.
What a fun place to create and have fun!
Lots more pics are available in our “Fun in Kansas City” Flickr set!
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art, city, creative, creativity, kansas, kc, kaleidoscope
toy story is a good moovy i wonder if i ckood chag it iwood go all the way back to one woody was ohlone thin he fownd buzz recs
ham mister and mrs btatowhed jesiy and bolsiy thin a boy andy  bot thim at a grag sale thay loved it thaer .
Rachel has seen her siblings listen to audiobooks on their iPods, so this week she decided she’d like to have some of her own – particularly in light of our upcoming road trip to Kansas in a few weeks. Last night we searched the iTunes Store together to explore what was available that might be of interest, and she found a Dr Seuss compilation of nine books along with Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” which she thought would be great.
Since she just had $9, I agreed to split the cost of the books which totaled $13. This provided a good opportunity for her to learn how to divide by two, in a practical context. This evening at dinner she took 13 sugar packets at our restaurant and separated them into two groups, eventually figuring out she had to tear one in half. In this way she figured out we both needed to contribute $6.50 toward the purchase. This evening before bed she made her purchases with my help, and then recorded a five and a half minute podcast discussing her experiences with Audiobook purchases on iTunes. Lots of great learning together tonight!
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Today Rachel used a video by John Steven Gurney on the Art Snacks learning community to draw a reversible face. This is the “man version:”
Turned upside down, this is the “baby version!”
Rachel recorded an explanation of how she used Art Snacks to learn how to draw this, using iPadio on my iPhone.
Here’s the 2.5 minute video from John in which he shows how to make this drawing!
Find more videos like this on Art Snacks
Thanks to Kevin Honeycutt and many others who continue to make Art Snacks a vibrant community filled with creative artists sharing their work and ideas!
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art, creative, draw, howto, learning, tutorial
This is a picture of Rachel’s stuffed animal cat, “Mittens,” which she drew on TuxPaint.
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draw, paint, cat, kitten, computer, tuxpaint
Sent from my iPhone
This is a story Rachel (age 6) typed tonight all by herself on our family netbook. We printed it on our home printer, and then she read it aloud. I recorded her oral reading using the iPadio application on my iPhone, which created this embeddable audio version. Rachel based her story on the Starfall.com Chinese fable, “One Rice Thousand Gold.”
one rise tawsin gold by rachel
one day a little gill wuz waking past the woter fool
tin sheye sol a pot of gold
sheye ran to it but a old womin said one rise tawsin gold
so sheye gave hr a rise and sheye gave hr tawsins of gold
pesos
look look look wut i fawn
yes mom yes i did rimier wut i said
non of that yes mom
so i chradide the gold for food yum yum sheye said
wun sheye was waking dawn the shtrete a min said i will give
you food if you gave me some gold
ok so i gave him some gold
i stopt for a momit and said tis is not rite i spinet my manee oh no
i made a bad chose oh wut am i going to do?
i no i will do one rise tawsin gold so i wint war i sol hr and sheye wuz gon
sheye dide
oh no i said hr stuff is still heir i can gist git it so i did it
Yesterday members of our family became owners of a new trampoline, and much of my afternoon / evening was spent putting it together. Let’s hear it for opportunities to be OUTSIDE and get lots of EXERCISE jumping and playing!
Video recorded with my iPhone 3GS and uploaded to Flickr via PixelPipe.
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play, trampoline, jump, jumping, fun, outside