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~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ the morphometrics of distance learning

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~3-23 to 4-23~

Quull School

At the end of March we started what we called Quull School, a self-directed version of the supplemental learning of the school district. I did show Quinn the lists of projects and learning tools from the school, but after a glance at it, he decided his focus would be on his own pursuits, and I supported him on that. By design, the school’s supplemental learning could not delve into new territory beyond what the students have already learned, as not all students had gained access by just a couple of weeks into the stay-at-home order. The IT personnel of the school had been delivering chrome books and the bus drivers had been delivering supplemental learning packets along with lunches, but it would be a few more weeks until Distance Learning For All could be implemented, new material could be provided, or grades could be back in play. I support the equity of this, and at the same time, I would not require Quinn to review topics he already knows, as that is a particularly painful form of torture to kids with his neural wiring.

We launched Quull School with a game of scattergories. I had him come up with the categories based on areas of learning he would like to dive into more, so we ended up with categories of Music, Programming, Math, Periodic Table, Dinosaurs, Marsupials, and Mythology and played several rounds. For the letter E, I recalled Eoraptor from Quinn’s days of pre-reading when I would draw dinosaurs starting with each letter of the alphabet for him to color, along with the letter. When I told him about that phase of his learning career, he did not remember, so I showed him the sketchbook from that era. We discussed what would work for planning and reflecting on the learning he would be doing, and he decided on a few organizational tools and accountability measures. We planned an extra hangout later in the afternoon each day of Quull School to touch base on how his school day went. I walked him through using google calendar for initiating the meeting, which he called “school with mama.” No time like the present to acquire these extremely relevant skills; like so many life skills, he and I are learning concurrently.

I saw an example of a basic planner where each day of the week had two boxes: 1. the plan and 2. what I did. I showed it to him as a potential idea for how to track his learning goals and progress. From here, he developed his own Quull school log/table in a google doc; it started the same way with the plan/what I did (reflection) and for that first day, his entries were “make a plan” and “made a plan.” His resulting schedule slides ultimately ended up several steps more detailed than the original example. An extra slide contained his list of ideas in case of days when he wasn’t sure what he felt like learning: Math, Electronics, Music, Computer Programming, Italian, Chemistry.

As for the content of the schedule, it started filling in rapidly. Quinn’s paleontology camp director set up Paleontology lectures on zoom for every Tuesday and Thursday; Q agreed to write a paragraph summary of each one, to keep his writing skills sharp. He also spent a fair amount of time learning more computer programming on khan academy. He had been chipping away at the html section, having finished animation in javascript, but now he has moved deeper into advanced javascript because “I want to really start making games.” I helped him set up to use zoom for his paleontology lectures. I can’t help but notice that Quull school is allowing us the opportunity to actively tackle some big executive functioning skills that don’t easily fit into the normal schedule of school and life.

screensharing: check.

Geometric morphometrics

After his first zoom lecture he told me about geometric morphometrics, which he explained very eloquently and I recorded on my audio recorder. I know he found that area of study quite intriguing – math plus fossils. Quinn was munching on cherries on the hangout, or I bet he would have said a lot more!

“If you take two faces, like yours and mine, and you compare segments of them, like say between nose and earlobes and chin, for example, uh, then the overall shape formed by that is going to be different for you than for me,” said Quinn.

I said, “Ok and so you could go by the length of the segments or you could go by the area or the volume or other geometry… So then if you find a new fossil of us, of our group of beings, then you measure it and you can kind of place it in sort of the timeline of age? And or gender, or whatever it is that you’re able to find out? Uh, that is awesome. That sounds really Quinn-like, like a Quinn thing.”

“What’s just morphometrics?” he asked.

“I guess it would just be comparing without the geometry of it, just comparing features… hmm, so morphology is like the shape of things, like when I do parasitology there are different worms that I identify. I can identify them by genetics but a lot of times I do it by morphology which means I’m looking for certain features like the shape of the mouth or suckers or spines or things that a parasite can have. But just descriptively instead of measured. So presence or absence of a spine is not geometric morphometrics – morphology is what I’ve always called that. -metrics by definition is measuring, so morphometrics is maybe measuring the lengths of the features but not necessarily calculating the geometry in terms of angles and area and volume… of the snout or whatever. That’s a really cool topic. I could see you getting into that.”

Quinn’s paleontology lecture summaries contain some real gems of wisdom:

3/31/2020

Geometric morphology is where you take a series of points on a subject and only look at them, and do the same for a different subject, then compare the shape or the distance between certain points and see how, say, some animal’s shoulders get broader as it ages or that in that species, the females have smaller feet than the males, or something like that. Also, as a side note, make sure to take at least one or two classes on public speaking and presenting and other things like that. The last thing that I learned is that sometimes, political arguments between countries can block off certain areas to fossil hunting.

4/2/2020

Elytra are the wings on the inside of a beetle’s husk, folding into the shell when they stop flying and land. Also, here are some tips for doing destructive analysis if you have low sample size: do some other destructive analysis on a different fossil type that has higher sample size and keep doing it as practice until you are sure that you will not only do the destructive analysis correctly and not mess it up and that you will gain valuable knowledge from the research.

4/7/2020

Hippidion was an ice age horse that scientists are pretty sure had a trunk because of how long the nasal passages are on the skull. Also, some hooved animals that are ice age and older had three toes and some even had five toes extending off of their hooves. These are believed by some to be proto-hooves that later evolved into the one and two “digit” hooves of modern animals. Another thing is that sometimes there can be things that conflict with everything that you have studied and learned thus far, and if this happens just know that there are a lot of things we haven’t learned yet even on well studied subjects. Also, side note: never discount data just because you don’t like it or because it conflicts with what you found in your studies.

4/9/2020

There are many different types of cells in the brain and they all have very different functions. Four specific types are trained to let loose certain hormones in the brain like fear.

4/14/2020

Networking can help get you into the job you want. Also, just a note think outside the box if/when you are getting fossils out. Some weird things can be useful.

4/16/2020

Antivenom comes from mixing the venom of different snakes and injecting enough to be noticeable by the immune system of, but not deadly to, sheep. Then you collect the antibodies made by the sheep, and mix them together. Side note: if there is no job that matches the thing you want to do, make the job up, because then not only will you get to do what you want, but it makes space for more of those below you in the ranking of the business as well.

4/21/2020

If you are trying to get a job as a federal worker, make sure you did everything right (i.e. your resume is PERFECT), otherwise you won’t usually get the job. And if something says “PHD preferred” treat it as “PHD required”, because it probably basically is. Another thing, make sure to never turn down any math classes for science careers, because it might be useful.

4/23/2020

Science is not a good subject to frontload on, because it will be painful to go through as you go through the classes you picked for science. Also, try visiting different universities to narrow down which one you want to go to, but don’t go out of your way and spend $200 to go visit one thing.

In-person paleontology camp has been canceled for 2020, but online camps are being invented. I am so thankful Quinn is already hooked into such a cool paleontology community and grateful for the opportunity he has had to immerse a little more in learning on a favorite subject.

Distance learning for all

Quinn had a bit of an emotional response to the idea of school starting up online. He said, “there is a pandemic going on and if they think I am just going to do school, they’re wrong.” Distance learning for all started April 15th, and part of the resistance was, I knew, not knowing what it would really entail. The arrangements were: two half hour sessions with their homeroom teacher per week, with teachers available by appointment for other time slots for additional help. Assignments and quizzes were administered through google classroom… periods 1 and 2 released the week’s assigned work on Mondays (Language arts social studies), 3 and 4 on Tuesday (PE and band) and 5-6-7 on Wednesday (algebra, video production, science) and so he had a week to turn in the work for each class. He ultimately ended up being much more flexible, and it was a nice enough format so he could plan his time how it works for him, not be expected to be in a seat from 8:05 to 3:05 each day and tune into certain classes at specific times (he could still attend his paleontology zooms, and so on). The chance to virtually see some of his peeps for homeroom was nice (but with no pressure to – live classes could not be graded since they can’t ensure all kids can attend.) For his elective, there was a list of projects to choose from, and he chose some of the robotics-related ones first.

On days when he had trouble bringing himself to do school work (and these were not rare) I reminded Quinn to prioritize self care. That YES, we are in the middle of a pandemic and sometimes we won’t feel resilient enough to do our work. I told him I feel like that, too. We have to get our work done in good moments between now and when the work is due, but it is okay to have down time when you just don’t do any work. I think he works through these intense emotions more quickly for the lack of push back from me. I try to reflect his feelings, rather than fighting them, and I think he feels validated and can let them go.

Electronics, pi, volume of sphere, wau, frequency and pitch, volume of an icosahedron, waves and particles, extra dimensions

The sweet spot of this month was, however, that space prior to the implementation of Distance Learning. Always self-directed lifelong learners at heart….

Quinn sent me a photo of his organized resistors for making a foot pedal for his dad’s guitar. “Electronics day 1” was his caption. This is something he’s interested in, without being interested in playing guitar, just for the electronics learning. So quull.

I showed him what I have been working on- measuring the diameters of arctic cod eggs, and how I measure them in ImageJ software, based on setting a scale in the program to a known number of pixels per millimeter taken by the microscope camera; then we went over how I go from diameter to volume of an egg (sphere) and he was all over that four-thirds-pi-r-cubed math. Then we reviewed where pi came from, and how round things have pi inherent in them, and you can measure the circumference and diameter of a bunch of objects and average that ratio and you will approach 3.14159… Then I taught him a few tricks with calculations in google sheets for this, after he measured a few circles. Tricks I learned in a basement computer lab as a college freshman; how to click and drag to fill a formula down a column. We also discussed how the average will approach pi more quickly/closely for larger objects because the measurement errors would be more diluted.

We watched Vi Hart’s the science and math of frequency and pitch together at his request. She zooms in on the sine waves of each overtone of her own voice in Audacity software (which Quinn has been using to record music with his dad) to help understand how we experience sound, including nuances like why a middle C is always the same note but sounds different coming from different instruments or voices; along with a playground swinging metaphor and her excellent logical thought progression, I think we both learned a lot.

Audible made it free to listen to Harry Potter book 1, so I emailed that link to Quinn, and then realized he can also listen to it in Italian! We’ll see if he takes me up on it.  “Harry Potter, il ragazzo che ha vissuto.”

On our hangouts, we verbally reviewed wau; I used the end of my bokchoy to do an ink print on a piece of paper and then measured the angles and we were happy to see the phi angles of Fibonacci. We worked on math doodles like netted spirals, impossible triangles, fractals, Pascal’s triangles, and tesselated fish.

We played Uno and made hexaflexagons together. Then he wanted to do a project where we each made a set of D&D dice out of paper, so we did. I had Quinn look up the formula for volume of an icosahedron, aka a 20-sided dice. Quinn also worked on creating his own version of the card game mentioned in Percy Jackson called Mythomagic.

I sent Q photos of hummingbird babies enjoying multiple dinners. I miss feeding him multiple dinners. Also this month, we hiked on the beach together for my birthday and saw squid eggs and a green worm.

Reading this month: Quinn read The Parrot’s Lament and shared with me something he learned about dolphins collaborating with humans in fishing endeavors. I began reading to him Zero: the biography of a dangerous idea by Charles Seife. Sometimes a word or phrase would get him to interrupt and reveal some secret knowledge – he knew all about triangular numbers, for instance. We learned new words like flinders. He seems not only undaunted, but energized, by the necessity of additional dimensions to scaffold string theory in order to bridge the seemingly infinite chasm between quantum physics and relativity.

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ playing games, gaming plays

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quinn and i went to the pool several times this month, and he made some progress on learning to swim. the pool was almost empty and we had an hour each time to work on swimming skills. he is motivated to practice and a huge milestone was putting his ears in the water without plugs, a major sensory challenge overcome. he did back floats (he did brief ones with me letting go) and lots of bobs, i had him do bobs without holding his nose a couple times, and some tea parties sitting on the bottom. we also worked on kicks and stuff. it’s a lot to coordinate physically, but he needs this skill; it’s fine if he never rides a bike but i require him to swim for safety reasons living on the coast. he has come a long way just being willing to trust what i’m asking him to do, as not just his mama, but someone whose first summer job after babysitting and farm work was teaching swim lessons. each time he got water up his nose (3 or 4 times) he wasn’t too phased, and i’d use variations on his sifu’s line, “did you die?” “nope.” “see you didn’t even die” etc. he was still smiling each time, and he felt good about it when we were leaving.

venn diagram pancakes, following a viewing of a vi hart venn diagram pizza pie-a-gram video in which “fish make sense!” in quinn’s pancake venn diagram, there is overlap between fresh strawberry topping and maple syrup.

math boy got dropped off at my work one friday, and he chose, of all the sprinkles and frosting donuts in the box of leftover donuts, the “infinity donut” with just glaze, nothing fancy, but mathy. he decided he really liked how cute artemia are, when i showed them to him under a microscope, and wants to establish his own sea monkey colony at home.

he made a batch of thumbprint cookies on his own, and put together a wooden lobster sculpture.

grammy and grampy brought quinn with them when they came to visit the farmer’s market (and i worked just the set-up portion). then quinn and i got dropped off by grampy at the start of the summerfest parade, in which we were marching for karate. he was ambivalent about being in the parade leading up to the day, but afterwards he ran up to me and asked, “can i do the parade again next year?” he got to hold the banner (alternating with another of the bigger boys) and swing his chucks around.

q and i took grammy and grampy to the beach to go tidepooling. we looked at crabs and sea stars, and grampy and quinn had fun racing each other. quinn looked like he was studying the mathematical patterns of the waves coming up the sand.

grampy, quinn and i played parcheesi. quinn did some work on how to win and lose gracefully during the visit, given ample opportunities to practice his gaming social graces with grampy available as such a willing adversary. battleship, uno, war, pokemon, bone wars (the game of paleontology), and risk. i believe he even got grammy to play a round of simpson’s clue with him!

quinn used the typewriter to craft a letter to each of his cousins to send back with grammy and grampy, and included a spirograph design in each one, incorporating the favorite colors of mario, luigi, and schroeder.

quinn read many pages of life of fred to grammy, she of long patience for children reading. life of fred is quinn’s self-inflicted curriculum for the summer, and he has read through three life of fred texts so far: fractions, decimals and percents, and pre-algebra 0 with physics. the next two, pre-algebra 1 with biology and pre-algebra 2 with economics, are on deck. he’s excited to keep going through algebra and advanced algebra after that, because then he gets to do geometry. wau! this kid.

quinn got to ride in the back seat between grammy and grampy for our farm visit. i walked them all around, because i have taken the tour myself enough times now… and the crew was all over frantically harvesting for the next days’ markets, but we got to say hi to several of the people i know. mostly we just enjoyed the growing things and abundance and the beautiful day. and the boysenberry glazed potato donuts from the farm bakery. grammy took a rest in the flower garden gazebo while dad looked at machinery, and quinn followed around the bees looking for “bee butts” sticking out of flowers, especially the huge cardoon flowers. i took pictures of hummingbirds and flowers, and soon it was time for our lunch reservation in the farm restaurant. that place is so beautiful. we could eat grilled cheese in there and it would feel like an amazing meal because it is so beautiful with koi pond/fountain among blooming flowers just outside the big windows with light pouring in. flowers strewn everywhere around the tables made from giant slabs of trees, and over in the corner, a hand built clay oven where you can watch them cooking your pizza…

lunch was yummy. we got sandwiches and salads and quinn got a pizza and also wanted to try half a reuben sandwich… it sounded good to him when grampy ordered one. he didn’t end up loving it, because i think he didn’t care for the sauerkraut, but boy was it worth the price of half a sandwich for the sweetness of him wanting to order what grampy was having. then we all got ice cream for dessert. quinn and rich got blueberry cinnamon in waffle cones (the server said it tasted just like blueberry pie and quinn looked at me like “excuse me, why have i not had blueberry pie???” and we made a plan to make a blueberry pie back at home.) and mom and dad got boysenberry (such a pretty red violet color and so yummy) and i got cardamom rose. a perfect treat. “what’s a cardamom?” quinn wanted to know.

quinn and grampy played music together a bit (grampy playing guitar and quinn using his frog to play percussion) including renditions of country roads.

the whole family came to extract me from farmer’s market, and we got extra peaches so i could make peach salsa for sunday and grammy could make a peach cobbler. quinn was invited to aragorn’s birthday in the afternoon, so he made a card (a cool spirograph, for which he needed me to text aragorn’s mom and ask his favorite color; red) we stopped at the store to buy some yu-gi-oh and magic cards for aragorn on the way, which quinn wrapped in the back seat, and we took him over. by the time we left, quinn was helping mix up bubble solution, and barely registered us leaving.

we picked up quinn at 10 am. he had a blast. he was carrying a cup full of mini snickers from the pinata, and was eating bacon and cinnamon rolls when we showed up.

a lot of sunday was getting ready for our anniversary potluck. quinn and grammy rolled out pie crust i had made earlier in the morning for blueberry pie. quinn did much of the labor, under grammy’s helpful supervision. we had originally planned to do a campfire, which meant the menu was to have been hot dogs and smores, but two days beforehand, a complete fire ban was in effect, so we decided not to do a campfire, and changed the menu to nachos (kind of a no-brainer. the default food of our household!) the family of camp boss was in attendance, so quinn was absorbed into a pile of bouncing children on the trampoline.

grammy and grampy got to go to karate one night during their visit. this was a class both quinn and i could participate in together, so they got to see us both on the mat. sifu talked to them both while we were practicing stuff, and they really like him. no surprise there!

quinn and i took them on a beach driving tour. we stopped at a few awesome overlooks and drove the little tiny scenic loop along the cliff beside the ocean. at two of the stops we were able to see whales spouting. then we went to the lighthouse because we figured out that we could use grampy’s national park pass to get into any federal protected land, such as the lighthouse. they had made good use of their pass in yellowstone and the tetons, and then also the grand canyon on their trip home. but we didn’t stay long at the lighthouse because it was very crowded and extremely windy and cold!

we then made the required stop at the grocery store (grammy and grampy love going to fred’s), got an oil change for their car, and then we stopped at the toledo farmer’s market.

family boating!!! after he went back to his dad’s he even got his dad to take him, for which i want to award some points to quinn, in advocating for his interests and extra-curricular activities!

grampy remembered a sloth song, and sang it, then we had a fun time teaching him how to “ok google,” and ask things like “who wrote the sloth song” or “what will the weather be in grand canyon on monday?”

more uno was played. a 3 way game with grampy quinn and i. then i took q to his dad at 3. when presented with the idea of staying until grammy and grampy left, quinn said he’d rather not be here when g and g left, and just stick with the routine.

we had a few dinners where grampy would kind of explain some facet of his ideas and research on the electoral college so that was really cool for quinn to absorb, in terms of the discipline and lifelong learning going on.

quinn was away for a week, during which he spent his days at theatre camp, and then back home to the dragon house for week two of it.

we tested out a spell quinn read about in his d and d player’s handbook called “prismatic spray” which has a different effect depending on which color the opponent is exposed to; you roll a d8 to find out…yep, a rainbow spell, which for some reason, he knew i’d love. red for fire, orange for, acid, yellow for lightning etc. prismatic wall is a similarly color-coordinated spell, and depending on your distance from your attackers and so on, you may strategically choose one spell over the other. another morning before theatre camp (he would actually wake up early to make sure we had time to spend together doing this), we ran simulations on prismatic wall as well, while sharing seaweed snacks.

i listened to his story dictation incorporating these new spells. his story was about a pack of orcs being slain by a mage using prismatic magical spells, culminating in a very exciting ending in which the head orc “erupted in a towering column of flame!” language arts.

 

i encouraged quinn to write down his amazing prismatic attack scene into a blog post on the blog we have been establishing for him. (he has it set to private right now, so no link yet, but i’m very excited about the design of his blog and the initial writing he ended up doing! it was brief, but he appears to have a whole novel taking shape in his mind in which the prismatic attack on orcs scene is just one chapter. the book seems to begin with a very dramatic opening!

another activity we squeezed in during this week was to play with anagrams at the breakfast table. words we anagrammed included, canteloupe, prismatic wall, peppercorns (scorn, copper, person), spirograph (pi, gosh, hippos!), pancakes (snack, pen cap, ack!), and clipper ship (peril, perish, relish, pipers!).

in spite of having read 3 (and counting) math textbooks this summer, i still wanted to honor his teacher’s request that he continue working in khan academy to complete the 6th grade curriculum therein. based on his learning style, however, we decided he did not need as much repetition as khan automatically supplies. instead, we made an analog version of the progress chart in khan and filled in stoplight colors for him to color in as he familiarized with each concept in the  curriculum (with green signifiying confidence that he understands the concept), rather than striving to achieve the virtual percentage points by repeating questions where he already grasped the concept.

gratuitous photos of playing with the family of camp boss whenever we could squeeze in some time!

theater camp flew right on by. on the final thursday, i went and saw his 2:00 performance and rich and i went together to the 6:00 performance. the theme this year was board games, and his group did the game of life. he was a blue peg! he had a distinctively stiff walk and monotone speech, and did a great job of staying in character.

a peg only has a few simple purposes in life. repopulation, occupation, education, and dedication… as a peg, quinn had to repeat these four purposes after his peg teacher. the plot involved action surrounding pegs obtaining living assignments,  job assignments, and the “start a family” task. they were told that, “compliance is key. your job as a peg is to adhere to the rules, and the giant fleshy creatures that often come down from above to sculpt and shape our malleable space-time.”

the female protagonist is told one morning, “you’ve landed on the marriage square. please report to the marriage office sometime today.”

she makes a decision to go ahead and accept her task, and approaches quinn’s character to marry her. he replies, “oh! i would like that very much! i hope we are lucky enough to land on the children square! i heard if you’re lucky they’ll send you triplets. right through the mail, three pink and blue little pegs. i once saw a peg with 50 peg children.”

as soon as she requests that he meet her at a certain time at the marriage office, he launches into the exact same “i hope we are lucky enough…” monologue once more.

some of the clever turns of phrase by the student writers (these plays are all written by camp participants and their counselors) remind me to have hope for the future. these young people are wide awake and paying attention!

that goes for the camp leaders, two dedicated people who were once campers and counselors themselves. their improvisational fill-in segments between each of the 5 kids’ group plays also made me smile at their wit. each time they’d pull a game box out of the drawer, there was discussion of the merits of the game and whether or not to play it. of risk one of them said, “it’s just trying to make imperialism look cool.” and of the pink and blue pegs of life, they both agreed such a color scheme was outdated, that game pieces should be gender non-specific.

it was fun to congratulate my young thespian with a bouquet of dahlias from the garden, and watch him interacting with his camp friends after the show.

q brought his life of fred book along as we drove out to the farm for tomatoes, then once it was too dark to read, fell asleep in the jump seat of the truck.

after his last day of theatre camp (a half day), he spent a few hours at work with me: “i’m going to make a painting app,” he decided, and worked on that in the khan academy javascript module. it’s only a matter of time before he is creating programs that are truly useful to humanity.

he spent the following two weeks at his dad’s house, mysteriously building “something that gets wet” in their back yard (stay tuned next month!). i went to the middle school on his behalf to get him registered for school, and looked forward to having one more week of summer to spend together before the school year begins!

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ enfolded eggs part 2

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continued from part 1

watching the moon with quinn one night, we saw a dragon cloud overtake the moon, sliding up its nostril and eventually becoming its eye. though the moon was enfolded in wisps of cloud, the cloud was now illuminated from within. dragons are always on our minds here at the dragon house, but especially for quinn recently as he has been reading eragon and making spinoff dragon cards for a new game. his first two creations of a wind drake and a storm drake are pictured, including an extra-spirally tail on the storm drake!

in his game about barbarians, archerers, giants, and goblins, situated among castles and builder huts, barracks and cannons and archer towers, he developed a defense of a spring coil, to propel enemies back over the wall surrounding the compound when triggered. then he modified it to have them land on yet another weapon, a tesla. he explained this electrical-magnetic device to me, and i asked him where he had learned the word tesla.

don’t you know, he read about tesla in the t section of the dictionary back in fourth grade. when he was reading the dictionary one day. as one does.

i had him browse the wikipedia article about nikola tesla and his eidetic memory and amazing mind. i thought maybe he could relate to the guy.

he still pronounces archer “archerer.” the holdouts are few and far between now, and he will reminisce with me about certain ones like “last day” for yesterday and “next day” for tomorrow, which were his staple reference points in time as a toddler. this is the type of thing i wasn’t able to anticipate about being a parent; as i’m headed up my spiral staircase, he is also wandering up his, and we’re both reaching vantage points along the way from which we are both looking back downward and outward together… it’s impossible to articulate what a trip it is.

quinn’s tag pull-out class was re-established to close out the school year. they took a field trip to an escape room, full of different locks and puzzles and codes they had to put together. he had fun, and though he said his group went over the time limit, they got to the end of all of the clues anyway. he described it all in intricate detail (such as tables with checkerboards painted on them) and was pleased to bring home a souvenir key. the kids are planning to build their own escape room to put their peers through back at school, so this was good research!

other forms of entertainment besides watching math videos this month have included a may the fourth! star wars movie night at home with (the best ever, made by rich) popcorn.

he and i played his new strategy game (from his easter basket) called odin’s ravens.

we also attended the dance performance of the wizard in oz in which several of our young friends danced.

one sunday after a women’s self defense seminar, i asked quinn to go for a jog with me. i started teaching him about which side of the road to run on, pointing out exceptions and how to make a judgement call when you’re on winding back roads with various amounts of shoulder. he is a good little runner, very uncoordinated but has endurance and is cheerful about it. i need to get him some better shoes to run in than his vans. we decided we’ll run to karate sometimes so we can be in good shape for fall cross country season.

one week quinn was sent to the library during the time his classmates did each state test session, to work on his “elo” or extra learning opportunity. he made a google slide presentation comparing mythologies from 4 different cultures (greek, roman, norse, and egyptian), as he had planned ahead to do. he missed both thursday and friday of the school week (at his dad’s house) and i learned later that he had not been collected from the library after each test session in a reliable enough manner, and that he had missed lunch period both tuesday and wednesday as a result.

i asked quinn more details about what had happened, and whereas his dad had framed the oversight as something more sinister (shame/disapproval/punishment by staff of those opting out of testing), i found out from quinn that he had been sitting in an area behind some book fair shelves on a low cushion, causing no trouble for the librarian who had her regular library classes coming and going, in addition to book fair. i explained to quinn that he has a choice of how he looks at what other people say and do, and it’s possible that his dad might interpret something in a very negative way without having all the information. we can choose just as easily to interpret what happened as an unfortunate oversight, and if we give people the benefit of the doubt that they are in a jumbled up routine and the dots didn’t connect how they were supposed to, it makes it easier to adapt. equally importantly, i also encouraged him that he can speak up for himself, and say “hey, i didn’t get lunch” to a teacher (this he did not do), who might be able to open up a box of granola bars for him at the very least. spending our energy on developing strategies to make it in the system instead of judging the system. that’s a lot of baggage i don’t want him to carry around.

as it turns out, this story has a silver lining… his friends, to whom we’ll refer as aragorn, gimli, and legolas, had grabbed him a bag of carrots and a fruit cup (the portable lunch items) and brought them to recess for him after lunch on the second day of him missing lunch, because they had his back and were worried about him missing it again. i asked him if he had been okay missing school the following two days, or if he would rather have gone, so he could be with his friends, and he said he had agreed to stay home, but that he had also wanted to go. i let him know i felt it was okay for him to insist on going, even if his dad was leaning towards having him stay home. self-advocating still a hot topic, and looks like it will be for a while yet.

quinn helped me come up with pseudonyms for his three friends, and though we explored pokemon, star wars, or naruto characters, we agreed the reference to the fellowship made perfect sense. encouraged by the friendships forming and bonds building among these four throughout fifth grade, i have been thinking of ways to try and nurture their bond over the coming summer, and into the start of sixth grade. i don’t want to necessarily hyper manage his social calendar, but i also hear a lot from the poppy moms about how hard a time so many of them have with finding and keeping friends… so being able to foster it a little bit into these middle school years feels like a good investment. they’re his friends, he made them himself, i just feel like i could nudge things in the right direction to keep the friendships going over the summer and into next year… when it may feel like it matters more to have some dependable friends.

he presented his comparative mythology research, result of the three days he spent in the library, and i was so glad i got to be there for it – because he advocated for doing it during my thursday afternoon volunteer time. i took video… it’s 14 minutes long. the sound is poor, but it’s possible to hear his voice over the bouncing yoga balls if you play it in a completely quiet room.

 

 

 

we had a delightful visit from our pancakes in april! lots of minecraft and dragon playing went on in between basketball games!

we attended a karate seminar with our sifu’s sifu. he’s a fun older guy with a 7th degree black belt, we like him, and he’s a good teacher. he loves quinn and i, always remembers our names. our mrs. todd was testing for her black belt (the big reason for his visit from california) and quinn was very excited to congratulate her on her promotion!

 

one saturday i took quinn with me to farmer’s market because rich was also working, and he was a big help again. we got to leave early, and attempted to go visit the tall ships for deck tours. however, there was a super long line and even though we stood in it for over an hour, they had to close before we could get on. quinn was very bummed, actually shed a few tears even though we had been talking about how it might happen, but he bounced back really well. i took his picture with the ships, and then we decided to try and watch their “battle sail” from the shore. we sat on the bay beach and ate our lunch and bundled up in a blanket and watched them. it worked out well, but they didn’t do much battling; gotta love when it’s too windy for sailing. by the end of our adventure, he was content. this was timely, because i really needed to use the bathroom, and i said, “i could just go over behind those bushes,” but quinn wouldn’t have it, “no! do not besmirch nature like that!” i was laughing so hard at his word choice that he wondered if he had pronounced it correctly, and i knew then for sure that it was another case of a word learned from literature. he was grinning at his correct usage and pronunciation, when i assured him he had it right. (i did not besmirch nature, i went inside the visitor’s center.)

in other vocabulary news, i have been getting called out on exaggerating things, with a quick retort of, “that’s hyperbole, mom.”

at our spring parent-teacher conference, his teacher told us what a long way quinn has come in his writing, saying he is most certainly ready for middle school in that area… “he is using appositives correctly, he’s ready for semi-colons.” (quinn chimed in, “i already do use semi-colons!”) moving right along to the next topic…

the pythagorean theorem, of course. his star test results are saying he’s ready for that type of math, and she went over again how she wants him to continue his khan academy math over the summer. she feels he is doing great, going at a good pace, and as long as he plans to continue over summer, will be in good shape to skip ahead to the 7/8 accelerated math for which she recommended him; where they learn the pythagorean theorem and then in 8th grade he’ll be walking down to the high school for geometry.

she said he’s ready for things in middle school, and recognizes that he needs a lot more challenges put in front of him than what she has been able to do in her limited way, and we get to start to expand on that in middle school. she recommended we visit with the teachers (at least for math and language arts) at the very beginning of the year to let them know that sometimes quinn needs cueing on certain executive function things, but to let them know about his test results and that he is ready for the challenges, and make sure they are putting those in front of him- there is no accelerated language arts, but she made a good point in that the students tend to get sorted a bit more by level in middle school, and i remember that… i was in enriched english and accelerated math with the same set of kids, who therefore kept showing up in my other class periods for p.e., french, science, social studies… because we had the same constraints on our schedule. this ends up meaning for quinn that his particular class for english may tend to be able to handle more advanced stuff as well.

on needing more coaching or cueing on things non-academic… he has made lots of gains in these executive function areas, but has room to grow. my job as i see it is to empower him to solve these things, and if that means an extra one hundred conversations about not avoiding bathroom use, that’s what i’ll do. i feel the same way about self advocating (about bathrooms, math classes, or parental duties to drive him to his activities,) and plan to keep the whole conversation going. the latest addition to the time management tool box is a watch, and he has been wearing it consistently and reporting on the time at regular intervals. rich and i are hoping it serves to increase his awareness of how much time various tasks require, and maybe clue him in on where he loses track of time.

on conference days, he went to work with me, set up a schedule for the day, and stuck to it while i was stuck in a freezer for 3 hours! he even did some khan academy math, a homework summary, and spent lots of time on khan computer programming (he has completed over 90 lessons as of this writing! essential items such as how to code a rainbow!). he also played a little minecraft and read some of eragon.  then he wrote music note letters into his sheet music for hedwig’s theme. over the course of these two months, he has become proficient at playing the song, and i think he is very proud of this accomplishment.

he participated in open house and the spring concert at school (they played recorders, which was priceless). all he wanted to do was go make slime in one of the classrooms, as they had a “fair” atmosphere with activities. his hands were too warm, so he got all gooey and messy.

at the nexus between quinn’s math and music concentrations, he found himself once again engrossed in vi hart’s imaginitive and fun video on “folding space-time” which turns out to be centered around a tiny hand-crank music box that will play notes punched in strips of paper. even mobius strips! vi explains how music is a great medium in which to play with the dimensions of both space and time, and my hat is off to her for enfolding so much wonder and delight into her videos, whose nerd metaphors are now permanently embedded into my son’s psyche. i couldn’t resist obtaining a music box for quinn so he, too, can fold space-time.

at quinn’s school, students are voted for by their classmates throughout the year for exemplifying each of their “eight essentials.” (the full list of eight: respect,    kindness,    patience,  selflessness,  honesty,  forgiveness,  humility  and  commitment.) quinn was nominated for the commitment award! he was very proud that his peers felt him to be a committed person. i affirmed that i observe him to be very committed: when he sets a goal, he doesn’t give up, and goes on to achieve it with focus and determination, or as our karate principles describe it, perseverance, and indomitable spirit. but also, in the sense of commitment to people he loves, or causes he believes in, i see evidence of a very caring, principled, and loyal guy!

tour of sixth grade science classroom; at his table, from left: gimli, quinn, aragorn, and legolas

something that was a pretty big deal in may was the field trip to visit the middle school! i was asked to go along as a chaperone, which was an insightful peek at how nurturing these fifth grade teachers must be. there was high intensity that day, spanning the full range of human emotion. this is a huge transition for a kid, as i well recall. i think quinn is mostly taking it in stride, is excited about the new opportunities he’ll be met with, and ready to take on this new set of challenges. he had one minor freak out about a lost raffle ticket, but his peers were all over the board with elation and trepidation.

along with the explosion in learning/absorbing, there has also been a period of emotional intensity. as a result of forgetting to take care of his basic needs for food, water, bathroom, throughout the day (executive function skills), he has had a few music lessons where he was not at his best. processing those times after the fact is also intense, requiring quite a bit of finesse to extract what is going on internally for him, and involve him in finding solutions. i have been working on finding a good balance of stern firmness (holding the line of politeness to his music teacher) and compassionate sounding board (patiently waiting for the “it” that is really bothering him to be revealed, nodding understandingly that the piece of paper he didn’t want cut that morning and the disagreement over the game with his friend caused his “really bad day”), then revisiting lessons from earlier in life about mindfulness of staying on top of processing our emotions in real time so that we don’t take them out later in the day on our unsuspecting music teacher.

by lights out the night of one such discussion, he was telling me “i love you as big as the sky, as big as the ocean all the way to the moon… no… do you know the name of any galaxies besides ours, the milky way?”

“no.”

“well then, all the way past the milky way and back again eleven quintillion times.”

enfolded in the layers of all those surly emotions, there it is.

p.s. in the spirit of lifelong learning, i looked up some other galaxies. and quinn, i love you all the way to gn-z11 and back again, eleven quintillion times. (that’s 32 billion light years away, folks! it’s found in the constellation ursa major, aka the big dipper. there are also a sunflower galaxy, a whirlpool galaxy and a tadpole galaxy, all very cool looking, but they’re not as distant!)

 

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ percolator

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a long and winding hodge podge of learning and living that i have decided to stop editing and move on from… read at your own risk (warning! verbosity ahead!), and probably pour yourself a cup of tea first.

science fair! i had the privilege of being the science fair mentor for quinn’s 5th grade class. his teacher had a very clear plan and it made it very easy to guide the kids through the process of gathering their data. they worked in groups to build worm compost bins, and then ran experiments based on, in most cases, food preferences of the worms. quinn’s group chose to compare the worms’ preference for raw potato to cooked potato, by adding equal amounts of each food at the start of the 4 weeks, and weighing what was left of each type after each week passed.

after i got done doing science with the kids one afternoon, i had a great conversation with quinn’s teacher. i opted quinn out of the state smarter balanced testing this year. it’s a matter of filling out a form, and since the detriments to quinn seemed to be outweighing the benefits, i filled out the form. his teacher had emailed me about another test called oaks science, that he will take as a 5th grader, and letting me know that if we wanted to try to opt out of the OAKS, it required a religious or learning disability reason and apparently involves a great deal of writing on the parents’ part.

this is all aside from star testing which actually provides some insight on specific skills; in quinn’s case the insights are limited based on how far out of range he scores. he still takes a star test at the beginning and end of the year.

i had emailed her back explaining our reasoning for the SB opt out was that Q was showing signs of stress last year and that all the rest of my misgivings about standardized testing aside, that particular test doesn’t even seem like it offers teachers any feedback on how to help kids learn. i have seen the results for the past two years, which aren’t returned until fall (when quinn wlil be a 6th grader with a different set of teachers) and seemed fairly useless to me.

i asked her what her take on the OAKS was, whether it was like SB, whether she felt some other way about SB, acknowledging that i’m not the teacher, and want to know if i am missing some truly helpful aspect of it. i said i’m happy to write something though i could prove neither religious nor learning disability for quinn.

she eased any potential worries about the science test, said she thinks he should take it because it’s far less involved… 40 science questions with definite answers, not open-ended essays. she doesn’t think it will stress him out the same way the other one did, she sees that he gets hung up on writing answers, he percolates in his mind and it takes him a while to start writing. i loved that she has such an accurate observation of him, and also that she phrases it in such positive terms; she says she is fascinated by his differences. if she saw any sign that he was experiencing stress from the science test, she would “find a glitch” and that would be that.

she ended up sharing her own dislike of the sb tests, is glad i’m opting quinn out of them, encouraged us to opt out all the way through high school, and even finds the star only so useful for his level. she feels what he might really benefit from is tag testing, and even moreso, pre-sat testing when he gets to middle school. she told me she thinks i will really need to advocate for him over there, because she feels he really needs more tag programming and isn’t getting it. i’m so glad i shared my reasoning for opting out, because i think it freed her to share her take on things, and it turns out she is a pretty incredible ally in terms of seeing clearly what is needed with this boy’s education.

we planned what he will do during testing week, and while there were several good options for students opting out, we agreed the best was for him to do an independent project. she liked the concept of genius hour that google uses to foster ingenuity, and she felt quinn could handle an open-ended project on a topic of his choice. she wanted it to entail some sort of end product that he could then share with the class (a presentation, animation, essay, artwork, etc.)

she was also supportive about us going to new york for a week, saying he will learn a lot from traveling!

“percolating” is such a perfect word to describe quinn’s thinking process, especially when it comes to getting ready to write something. he does most of his work inside his head, then it comes pouring out in the eleventh hour, spilling onto the page in a form that requires little editing. what wonderful images and memories the word “percolator” brings to mind: from recent fourth of july camping trips, enjoying breakfast around the campfire, to long ago visits with aunt margie and uncle george in their cabin in the adirondacks. again, it’s amazing to find someone who has the capacity to observe such things about my kid so thoroughly in spite of the fact that he is “number 27” out of 30 kids in her room. seen, known, valued for who he is; sense of belonging, connection. see also: educational priorities.

this story has been percolating along, about a page every few weeks or so…

mapping was a big topic covered in recent weeks. quinn’s imaginary land of canith has realistic longitude and latitude lines, a legend, and all the physical features of a map that you could want!

his tag class also included some compass and map work. another week involved animal tracks. one week, they worked outside and made miniature shelters. at the end the instructor let them all destroy their structures, but quinn had built his off to one side by a rock and said he was the only kid who decided to leave his up in case a squirrel needed a place to hide.

i picked quinn up from school one afternoon, and he was his usual one-word answer, surly after school self, which i’ve come to think of as “feed me” and so i didn’t start asking a bunch of questions (i’ve learned to wait until later for the most part). he was coming from a dad day and therefore no lunch leftovers to eat, but i had a tangerine. i did ask if he had remembered to bring his state book home (because when i was in class for science fair on thursday, his teacher had mentioned he still needed to finish it up). he said no. then when i asked if we should go back in for it, he provided self-defeated answers, “no, we can’t, because…” and “it’s raining” and “we’ll get hypothermia.” in the meantime, i had showed him the pack of brightly colored paper i had picked up (including martian green and cosmic orange) for making more of the origami octahedron project he liked doing the previous week at school. i had gotten a smile out of him with the martian conversation (because he read it aloud and then i said oh, like marTEEans, from martia?) but he was still mopey, so i re-parked and started peeling the tangerine, and then handed him a slice, calling it a marTEEan orange power pack, and said it would protect him from hypothermia as we returned to the mother ship… and also from scurvy. and by then he was laughing and walking in the rain into the school to get his stuff. and he said they were cosmic orange power packs, duh.

so, handling moody tweens is easy. just be a goofball. and provide snacks.

in his homework folder, he had a handwritten note from a friend saying to please bring himself and his family to go bowling at 3:30. (no bumpers). no date was specified, so i asked quinn, and he was pretty sure it meant the following day, saturday. luckily, i had background info that this boy’s dad is a fb friend of mine and rich’s due to being in one flew over the cuckoo’s nest with rich, so i did some parental fact checking, and sure enough, it was legit. the response i got was, “i had no idea the Quinn he was talking about was your Quinn!”

our two families got along quite well, and the boys are a lot alike. two smarty pants stick figures.

after bowling, we had dinner with rich’s mom and some friends, which was fun and fancy. quinn did well with the fancy factor (napkin in the lap, multiple forks and spoons and courses). he is fun to be around, which i’m glad i can say about my ten year old. here he is at home the next day eating the leftovers of his herb chicken, still painstakingly scrubbing his sprig of rosemary and slice of lemon over each bite before consuming.

it’s been a time of ups and downs with friendships for quinn. while nothing major has taken place, i get the sense that things are shifting a bit for him and he is finding that he values certain things in friends, some of which he hasn’t quite found yet. one friend he has thought of as a best friend named another boy as his best friend while he and quinn were playing one day. i had a chat with quinn after overhearing that, deciding to risk bringing up a touchy subject rather than let it go untalked about. it did definitely come up on his radar, though he didn’t give it any energy with the friend. he got his feelings about it out with me, and though it didn’t feel great, he also realized it didn’t have to mean anything terrible, either.

we talked more about what he values in a friend. one thing he likes about the bowling friend (he’s going to need a pseudonym soon, i can tell) is that, “he understands what i’m saying.” i probed further to find out that what he means by that is, the vocabulary and language quinn uses are understood and do not need further explanation with this boy, do not need to be simplified or defined. they keep up with each other. they have a compatible sense of humor in that they both like word play, and they can get pretty complicated with their discussion topics without needing to slow down.

there’s a lot going on in social development. some intriguing correspondence from a female karate friend inspired quinn to respond in cursive to her letter. i’m glad to find that: he is eager to fill me on the details and let me read both his and her notes; that he seems to have a sense of the appropriate level of friendship at this age level and kept it all in friend terms; and that he writes with good reciprocity, both sharing some of his ideas but also asking her likes and favorites.

i just wanted to mention/appreciate that i love my dojo. sifu and mrs. todd have been so supportive of working with quinn in the limited time they have with him (to date his dad has remained insistent that he cannot bring him to class during his week) and they’ll even refuse to charge me full price for quinn since he is there only half of the time. meanwhile, they work hard to catch him up on his techniques when he is around, and they see who he is and what his strengths are, and emphasize those while helping him in areas where he is not as strong. they recognize things like perfectionism (they ease up the test pressure and focus on the fun), they recognize his desire to one day teach, and his cognitive abilities to retain all the details about each move of each technique, and they put him to work helping other students. i talked with them about how i feel he will become less tolerant of his dad’s refusal to bring him to activities, as he becomes a teen, and sifu was in agreement that time would come. it’s what i hope for with everyone who enters quinn’s life in any meaningful way, that the focus will be on quinn and what is best for quinn, that quinn will be seen and known and valued for who he is, and that the connection is alive and foremost between him and anyone in a teaching capacity. (once again, see educational priorities.)

they constantly express how happy they are that we’re a part of the dojo, so i know the feeling is mutual!

he has been reading up on egyptian mythology, and requesting books on hieroglyph translation! he also read riordan’s greek heroes tome, now that he has read pretty much everything else the man has written.

cats are sacred in egyptian culture, right? this one expects to be worshipped… the past few months she often helps quinn fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning.

one morning the day of his music lesson, i got him up a half hour early and he played a full third of the drum section of his book… he has much better focus in the morning. we have had some discussion about how he may need to work at the bells harder (the snare drum just comes so easily to him) but that it will be just as rewarding or even more so to get better at the bells, since he will have to work harder. i’m trying to do things to keep practice fun for him, and continue to help him when he gets stuck in perfectionism mode. rich helps by furthering his musical education, putting beatles cds on the stereo. i mix up what instruments we play (recorder, guitar, piano, miscellaneous percussion), rename his tunes, play along with him on a drum, piano, or recorder, and inform him of silly lyrics trivia.

quinn and i went to the talent show at his school, because his friend (of the bowling invite) was in a skit and also playing his guitar in the show. we ended up sitting right in front of his friend’s family and that was cool and random. he came to sit with us and they got to chat. after we left i was musing with quinn about the band they’ll form together, and quinn thinks they need more players, “like maybe a flute and a trumpet?”

we try to fit in a few of the “art fridays” classes offered through the visual arts center, and the one called mayan metalsmithing caught quinn’s eye this session. he loved the owl image he saw in one drawing, and ended up borrowing from that idea to make a very intricate pyramid with symbols representing four elements and other details. he certainly had fun using this new and different medium for creating.

we had a fabulous family visit in new york, complete with lots of learning about: wizard chess, drums, winter olympics sports, shelter building practice, plane de-icers, and the origami yoda series his cousins had out from the library.

i got quinn on friday from school, and took him to his “mayan metalsmithing” art class at the visual arts center. we went home, ate pizza for dinner, and got ourselves packed up.

before the trip, we got to spend the afternoon with rich’s daughter. she had on hgtv show called fixerupper, which was impossible for quinn to pull himself away from. still, he manages to learn things, and while we were waiting in the airport he told me that he wants a fixer-upper and to fund his paleontology research by flipping houses. his exact words were that he would “use the money for more expeditions and plaster”. i encouraged him to learn all the building skills he possibly can from his dad, so he can put them to good use. i think it’s an excellent plan, better than trying to compete for grants. the part he loved the best was taking a “blank” room (his word) and deciding what to do with it and putting all the things in it (he will also have a warehouse… to hold the optional items.)

we took a red-eye flight there as usual. as we were landing in newark, quinn and i were able to see the empire state building and the statue of liberty from the plane. flying to syracuse, quinn spent a long time looking out the window at the view of snowy new york countryside – i can picture him gazing out with his with hands folded in his lap.

i will also be able to picture quinn’s cute upturned face when he finally hugged grammy.  their bond is like nothing else in the world.

after some soup and corn muffins for lunch, the boys began dueling with lightsabers. as soon as that got rowdy, i strongly suggested we go sledding before the snow melted all the way, and we had a fun afternoon sledding, tobogganing, and generally playing in the snow.

we had a picnic dinner, as is the christmas tradition of the rews, and since we haven’t all been there for one since quinn was just shy of 2, we observed the christmas picnic tradition together.

by the time i woke up the next morning, uncle t and grampy had already left for work, and quinn had gotten up and was on the loveseat snuggling with grammy, just the two of them, just chatting. lots of cousin play time happened, and quinn began drawing a game on graph paper in his spare moments. quinn and i talked some about being a person who needs to do some recharging in between being with people, and i see how self-aware he is in this department nowadays.

we had so much fun watching the olympics. we mimicked the vocalizations of the curling athletes and feigned understanding of the subtle intricacies of the sport. we cheered on the men’s bobsled teams who incredibly tied for gold, and reminisced about olympics of yore when germany was still divided into east and west. rich and i had recently learned that the berlin wall has now been down as many days as it had been up, and grampy remembered having written an essay about the berlin wall in his younger days.

quinn got up  before me again the next day, but it was because he had fallen out of bed (from a mattress on the floor, so no biggie) and he immediately went downstairs to grammy, who tucked him into her bed for another 15 minutes so he could have a gentle wake up. my favorite thing is that he doesn’t bother to wake me up, because why would he when there is a perfectly good grammy to go to?

the paper airplane shop began in earnest on this day, and lasted through the rest of the week. mario’s design for an airplane called a scooty was a big hit, and many prototypes were made. the living room was a big mess after a while, but i grabbed a brown paper bag and named it the “airplane garage” at one point, said it was time for the boys to park their airplanes in the garage if they were ready to go outside, and they were, so they did. it got called “the garage” the rest of the week.

luigi made himself a parachute and wanted to do an egg drop, and i encouraged him (he was inspired by quinn’s parachute which he had seen in oregon) and then he and i went up to the barn to drop it off the hay loft, and it worked great! he was so thrilled.

in the world of olympics, it was the day lindsey vonn was doing her downhill skiing and we were screaming our heads off just as though we actually care about skiing.

that afternoon the kids played outside in the 60 degree weather for hours on end: swinging on the tire swing, climbing trees, building shelters, riding bikes, trying to jump on the pogo stick… and generally running around in the breezy mild weather.

before dinner, boys were hanging around the table so i put a pile of place mats and napkins, a stack of plates and a pile of utensils on one end of it and asked who would like to help with setting the table. quinn and schroeder (quinn’s newest cousin) handled the whole thing. quinn made a comment that he can’t refuse because he is a certified technician, and the tone of what he said was so cheerful and positive (instead of “i’m obligated” it was more like “i feel compelled to and proud to do it.”)

quinn did so well with bedtimes and routine, possibly motivated by the fact that he then ended up being the first cousin up every morning to monopolize grammy time.

i got up early and went to see my friend the next morning and when i got home, quinn was playing chess with uncle t (who took the day off wed) and i guess they got a few games in before the other boys woke up.

we all cheered on the olympic short track skaters because… well, because!

then rich and quinn and i went to visit uncle b, and got to see his baby goats (bowie and pixie, boy and girl, so cute!) and then go to his practice space so quinn could see his drums and he could show him some stuff. i took video of each of the beats he showed quinn so i can put them on his computer for him to play back and try to replicate… he had this look of awe listening to uncle b on the drums. he was kind of shy once he got behind the drums himself and it took him a minute to play anything, but he did do the basic rhythm he knows, and then he ad libbed a little bit and it was pretty cool. uncle b said, “he’s got that rew music gene” and seemed proud to have a nephew following in his drumming foorsteps. i am so glad they got that time together. he encouraged quinn to listen to certain drummers, and named several bands who have inspired him… quinn was soaking it all in.

that night i happened upon a scene in which quinn, luigi and mario were trying to make an origami cat using a you tube video, and uncle t was trying to help them. i sat in to try to help as well, but it was a difficult one, and we ended up watching the second half and realizing we should bail. then the boys helped quinn make an easy 5-fold origami yoda they had learned, and then i put quinn to bed.

the next morning at 8:00 i started seeing snowflakes… quinn came downstairs a few minutes after 8 and it was snowing in earnest, and the sound of him gasping… priceless. he told me he never saw it snowing before, only had woken up to snow being already on the ground, so he was feeling the magic. i asked if he wanted to go out right away, but he said no, he wanted to wait until there was some on the ground and then go out and play. it just kept falling and falling all day! 8 hours later there were 6 inches on the ground, and many giant snowballs, snow people, the base of an igloo, and ski tracks. quinn’s snow person had a big base, and tapered to a very small head, and he called it the security guard.

skiing was such an intense emotional experience for him. i found all of my gear from when i was his age (miracle… shoes in attic, skis in barn. poles in cellar…) and we realized the boots fit him fine! so we snapped him into the skis, and he was excited! and then he was frustrated! and then he was angry at me! and then he was angry at skis! and then he was on top of the world again! like that, for the whole time. he was so happy to be doing it (i mean, olympics mania was not lost on the boy) and yet it did not come easily, and he fell and it didn’t feel great, and he didn’t think i was right that falling is an essential part of the learning process with skiing. later on, we had yet another conversation about how sometimes we can be perfectionists…. and i think he is gaining insight about that all the time. so all in all, i am very glad i put him on those skis, and put that good challenge in front of him, and though it was not easy, it was enjoyable and a memory he will love forever.

schroeder came over, and quinn and mario went sledding with him and they had tons of fun. the snow kept falling… then at 4:00, it stopped and the sun came out! so we retired to the indoors for tacos! it was a wonderful, snowy birthday eve.

birthday!

there has been much written on the subject of this day already, a cold and rainy, paper folding, family gathering, peach pie eating, wonderful day of celebrating with his whole family all together on his birthday for the very first time.

in the morning we went to the cider mill and got to see andy and molly. they had been out of town visiting family for spring break, but it was so good to get to see them again. we got apples and donuts and went back to the house for play time until we had to leave for the airport.

quinn used his new birthday present book on star wars origami when he got home to create r2d2 and c3po. he had a frustration at one point and as i was trying to talk him through staying with it and staying calm, he told me, “i’m a perfectionist.” his increasing level-headed awareness of this inner challenge will help him so much in overcoming the associated obstacles!

he has been exploring more game programming using scratch. on one occasion he looked at trying to make a dinosaur bone digging game in scratch, and he played some other peoples’ games about dinosaurs.

he also started making a game called kashyyyk battle. one of the books i gave him for his birthday was about making star wars games in scratch. he read a bunch of it on the plane ride, and it is amazing to me how he started with making the (someone else’s icon design) whale swim across the screen to now googling “how to make gravity in scratch” and implementing all this crazy code and designing these characters himself (drawing individual pixels). yoda has a lightsaber that appears if you press space bar, to kill the clones… it’s a work in progress, but he got gravity working… and he knows exactly what he is going to do, he just needs more time to implement it all.

 

one afternoon, he thought of an idea for a new “story mode” game, after experiencing “scratch – story mode” and given some prior experience with “minecraft – story mode.” he worked in his graph notebook that bears the label “quinn’s games” to develop 3 characters (they bear striking resemblance to quinn himself, and his cousins mario and luigi) and began percolating some ideas about the story line of the game, in which he knew the heroes would encounter at least one dragon.

on time management… i’ve had him start using a white board to plan his time. one non-school friday he woke up just before 9 and he had until 2:30 when he’d leave for his dad’s, so i had him plan out his day in segments of 30 minutes. he got to choose when to have breakfast, lunch, music practice and homework, and then see how many other half hours were left for free choice (a game of bone wars, time to himself, time with me; i gave restrictions on my own time such as needing the time slot before his lunch free for making lunch) and he followed the plan pretty much to the letter and with only a little bit of grumbling/processing and a growing awareness of the passage of time (we used a timer for each 30 minute segment). i haven’t asked him to plan every evening, but some evenings i do bring it up, so he does less leaving things until the last minute or skipping them entirely (music practice is hard to fit in without some intentional planning, with all the karate and trying to get to bed on time and lengthy dinner and bath processes). this seemed like an area that could do with more scaffolding and coaching, and it seems like the right time to get some practice in before middle school.

one small victory in this area was that he got caught up on a whole week of reading summaries in one night. typically, he struggles against writing even one summary, and he is required to write four of them per week. he didn’t write any while we were in new york, believing he did not need to, but found out when he got back that he actually did need to. he set a goal for himself to have it done by wednesday, and worst case scenario friday, so he wouldn’t have to miss any recess to finish it at school. (that would take place after the one week grace period, so the following monday). he got home from karate one night and set to work and got 6 summaries written; not only did he get the back work done, but got himself up to date on his current homework for that week. all without a single mention from me, he just did it.

also in the department of planning ahead, he knows that he wants to do a comparison of the various mythologies he has learned about- greek, roman, egyptian, norse – when he spends his week opted out of testing.

for his karate birthday, i brought mini cupcakes and sifu gave him an amazing gift of throwing knives that quinn has been ogling in sifu’s weapons case for a while now. it’s so neat how he pays attention to what the kids care about. i brought cookies to school for his birthday on the monday he went back, since he had his actual birthday while he was in new york.

hat day ~ guitar and other instruments keep him interested in music even if his principal instrument is causing frustration ~cracking crab

“look out, snack shelf, because here comes winter storm quinn!” we had to laugh that winter storm quinn came and hit new york the week after we visited.

we celebrated st. patty’s with our local family. corned beef, green jello, plasma cars, and all the usual fixings!

quinn’s class took a 3 day field trip to outdoor school at the local omsi site known as camp grey. i chaperoned for two out of three days, so i got to photo document as well.

on day 1, the topics were marine mammals and birds. after stretching out a rope and visualizing the actual lengths of various marine mammals, from sea otter to blue whale, the kids got to cycle through stations, checking out bones, retrieving “food” out of water using different tools to represent baleen (strainer) and teeth (chopsticks), donning a blubber glove to see how much warmer it makes the water feel, dropping slinkies from their ears to the ground to test out echolocation, and designing their own marine mammal based on the adaptations they’d learned about. after lunch, they hiked to the jetty and did some great bird watching, spying an osprey nest, many cormorants, and a few other species, in addition to some harbor seals.

on day 2, our group went on a nice long hike to the beach! to warm up our brains before we left, we did an exercise using a crumpled up piece of paper to represent a watershed. the kids drew waterways where they seemed likely to exist based on the paper’s “topography”, and then the leader used a squirt bottle to demonstrate how the water would flow around the watershed. the hike involved some plant identification, a fun game of tag to represent the food web, and a fair amount of free time to explore and play.

and one certified cursive signature writing technician!

pi day!

quinn had his half-purple belt test! he tested alongside two of his peers who were receiving their green belts, so it was a pretty intense and thorough test, in which each kid was truly taken to their edge and made it back safely. each kid also had a chance to showcase the areas in which he shines, and while the other boys were both very strong in sparring, quinn’s talent for memorizing forms and for understanding theory were also displayed.

origami!

the science fair event was held at quinn’s school. i appreciated quinn’s teacher’s approach once again in that her class did a group effort sandwich board and a nice bulletin board, and skipped the individual displays (aside from worm bins! the actual experiment!)

it was a nice opportunity to talk with his teacher about him, whereas my usual capacity as a classroom mentor or field trip chaperone doesn’t often allow for that. she is looking ahead to middle school and said that she will recommend him for the 7-8 accelerated math class beginning in the fall. even better, she knew more about the teacher than i do, and said “i want him to have her right away.” this bodes very well, coming from this wonderful teacher with whom i feel very lucky he has gotten to spend fifth grade.

i also got to hear about how she feels quinn “thinks so outside of the box” and uses language in “ways i’ve never heard from other students.” she told me, “sometimes i put quinn’s assignment  on the bottom of the pile to save it for last, it’s like dessert!

i looked over at quinn, who was listening in, and said, “it’s story ice cream in a bowl.” and he smiled.

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ turrets and portcullises

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minecraft fortress building was a frequent occupation these past two months. quinn has also been inspired to build games in scratch, making use of a book fair purchase to familiarize with how to use code within the scratch framework to generate a game.

 

birthday books; on the right, an excellent story called eagle boy that i found at our local book store.

contemplating fortress features (like hidden sky libraries) with kitty ball.

mission control; where the scratch games are made, as well as some of the minecraft work accomplished. the head lamp slays me.

we cleared off a small area of his desktop so his piper can fit there, alongside a story cd. (he was listening to harry potter and the deathly hallows). i asked him if he felt he had figured out how to work in scratch, how to use the various commands.

“the only one i don’t know what it does yet is pen.”

“have you ever just played around with the commands and figured out what they do?” i asked.

“yeah! i figured out how to make someone jump! you go “face in direction zero (which is up) and then say move 5 steps then wait 1 second, then face in direction 180 (which is down) and then move five steps. and you actually JUMP!

“…and i know how to make gravity.”

he made his “first game ever” called whale saver, in which you have to click the space bar quickly enough to get the mama whale across the screen to the baby whale. if you are too slow, the mama whale drifts towards the left, and you lose if she gets all the way to the left and her thought bubble reads “defeat”; if she makes it to the baby, her thought bubble reads, “victory!”

then he made it more difficult by adding a shark that the mama whale has to out swim in order to reach the baby whale before the shark does.

we have an ongoing discussion concerning cool math games, and before he played it one day, we talked about using it to research how parts of a game work together, with his new perspective of game making in scratch, i.e. how you make it look like a penguin is swimming even if he is in the middle of the screen, by making other objects move past the penguin. though in my opinion there is nothing cool and a negligible amount of math embedded in cool math games, a site which i resent the schools promoting because of its blatant ads targeting kids and its ability to require restarting my computer, i am trying to find the middle ground between adamant disapproval of (big air quotes) cool math games and finding some redeeming value since it is obviously something quinn enjoys. reverting back to my principles, i asked how can we use even this despicable platform as a tool for learning?

 

he came home pretty psyched about his tag program one afternoon, just absolutely buzzing with inspiration about automata. they are going to build automata. i played dumb and asked what’s an automaton? he regurgitated the definition, understood what it meant, and was able to discuss it critically, such as when i asked “ok, so what makes it different from a robot?” we ended up watching some of the you tube videos he had seen in class, finishing up with the TED talk of theo jansen, which quinn subsequently reenacted, listing each adaptation that was added to each new iteration of strandbeest. his capacity to memorize reminds me of my ten year old self, while my 39 year old self has trouble remembering where i parked.

raspberry storytelling.

becoming entrusted with more dangerous kitchen jobs; serrated knife use, birthday candle transportation, and (the incredibly risky) making of guacamole.

shown above, his finished essay on martin luther king, jr., plus a collection of notes and research on the subject. one worksheet (most of which was empty, classic quinn) contained a space to write one connection made during reading/research on mlk where quinn had written “martin and i both are as non-violent as possible.”

 

we’ve been getting outdoors between bouts of rain. when we trek to the bayou, we sometimes catch imaginary pokemon; other times we observe trilliums, trout lilies, the flora and fauna. he was compelled to do some irl minecraft brick laying. i was intrigued to realize that he understood to alternate the way the bricks are oriented so their seams are offset in each layer. play is never pointless.

his class took a field trip to cape perpetua. we hiked, wrote and drew in nature journals, did a visitor’s center scavenger hunt, and hiked some more. our final hiking destination was the giant spruce, under whose roots the whole class crawled. walking together alongside a stream, quinn and i brainstormed descriptive language; gushing slushing sploshing galoshing giggling clapping hooshing whooshing shhhhhh… were just a few i can recall, describing our impressions of the different character of various sections.

he fell asleep on my lap on the return bus trip to school.

the library hatched a batch of baby salmon, so we stopped and paid them a visit.

baseball! i am surely biased, but i believe that quinn has very good aim, and i adore his pitching style of raising his left arm as though to place his pitch where he wants it. he has been practicing archery since he was quite small, and i noticed that when he began learning to use throwing stars, he aimed well with them, too. we are looking forward to more throwing stars, nunchucks, eskrima sticks, and bo staff classes that are going to be happening soon at our dojo.

quinn worked diligently on a birthday present for the baseball buddy pictured above (aka panda)… his very own pokemon collection. quinn sorted through his own binder to find cards of which he had duplicates, to put together a pretty awesome starter collection. he put them in a binder for panda, colored the front and back covers (raichu and greninja, panda’s faves) and he was very excited about giving him his gift.

earth day! more (slightly unfinished) school artwork.

one day when i was volunteering, quinn’s class discussed and voted on several topics, items that had been submitted to the suggestion box. one was written by quinn about rotating between play porch, gym and classroom when brain break has to happen somewhere other than the playground due to rain. his suggestion was the one voted into effect, after careful consideration of pros and cons of each alternative. their discussions are amazing to behold. (“who can show proof of listening to jasmine, and add to what she said; do you agree or disagree… because…” were some of the prompts the kids are accustomed to receiving.) they also voted on saving spots in the classroom for work (this was sorted out in all its nuances of when it is and is not okay to save spots), as well as whether to do yoga both at the beginning and end of the day (they already do it at the beginning) and they did institute an end of the day yoga session by majority vote.

quinn was pretty elated when his suggestion about brain break won in a landslide.

we also got to do a yoga session while i was there. quinn asked if we could order a set of the yoga cards for home, “so i can teach you yoga.” so we ordered some! we have done quite a few sessions so far. as yoga has been an incredible source of self care, solace, exercise and healing in my own life, i am quite pleased to see quinn embracing this positive practice.

feeding ice cream for mama’s birthday to the family of camp boss. beautiful sunny day to play with friends!

easter egg dying and hunting, and a fun (belated) easter basket when he got back from his dad’s.

one recent wendesday morning wake up (after a late bedtime due to karate then dinner then bath) was not one of my better ones (nag nag nag), so for thursday morning i decided to do a better job. when i went in he was burrowed under his grammy quilt, head and all, and my usual “good morning boo-pa-loo” song turned into more of a david attenborough narration.

“here we see a rare undescribed burrowing creature in its natural habitat. this animal has a fuzzy head and is very quiet, just before emerging from its sleeping burrow. we are hoping to catch a rare glimpse of this new species, which we shall give the name boo-pa-loo boo-pa-lee-doo, as it rises to consume one of its favorite foods; biscuits. with any luck, the aroma of the biscuits will entice the creature out of its sleeping burrow at any moment.”

for some reason, that worked better. it was easy to then coax each appendage out of the sleeping burrow with further narration, sans nagging. (i say it again: play is never pointless!)

play can be a science experiment. quinn made some spinning tops from legos, and it was a great avenue to discuss experimental design. he was telling me that the one made from the big lego wheel and the taller stick spun for the longest duration because it was the biggest. i asked him if he thought it was the larger diameter of the wheel or the weight of it (which aspect of “bigger”) that helped, and whether he could design an experiment to determine which factor was most important. he hesitated, then told me “you just gave me an idea” and came back having tested the wheel on an even longer stick, having found out that with the same wheel, the longer stick helped the top spin longer (yet another aspect of size). then he was able to verbalize how one could test two different diameters of the same weight on the same length of stick, or two different weights of the same diameter on the same length of stick, to test the diamater vs weight concept.

“concept” is a word he is using quite frequently. his battle/dungeon/castle/mythology/pokemon story language is as lyrical as ever.

in the realm of d and d, he has me on a mission to defeat a dragon, who is guarding a treasure stolen by some orcs/goblins from the elf high council (my character is an elf and she is apparently a member of said council) and right now we are discussing an alternate plan, instead of killing the dragon, to get him on our side. i freed one of the original guards who wasn’t killed when the treasure was stolen but who was taken prisoner, so he informed me that the dragon has one scale missing over his heart and that’s his weakness and the way to kill him if i wanted to, but i suggested making the dragon a shield/artificial scale and offering it to him in trade for the treasure (agreeing to set him free in the process) but then it turned out one of the orcs has the missing scale (made of mithril) and is using it as a shield so before i face the dragon the new plan is to go kill the orc with the missing scale and bring it to the dragon to return it as a peace offering.

and the experience of actually playing d and d is a lot like an incredibly long run-on sentence, so i’m going to leave that exactly how it is.

 

there was more work to be done these past months on the theme of advocating for himself. quinn arrived at the conclusion after one frustrating karate session (frustrating because of a missed week of class, and because he had forgotten the techniques he had learned the previous week) that he was disappointed about not being brought to karate at least once during his dad’s weeks. we had a pretty good conversation about how he, quinn, has a lot more power to change that than i do, and how he would be wise to communicate his wishes to his dad.

karate has provided a plethora of opportunities for self-advocating and initiative practice. our sifu believes in letting the kids have space to learn how to initiate their own advancement through curriculum; this implicitly allows them space to flounder, until they realize they are in charge of their own destiny. i very much appreciate this, and have had numerous discussions with quinn about this dynamic; such as discussing how open mat classes allow an ideal time to “bug sifu” for a new technique, given the smaller class size and therefore increased availability on the instructor’s part. children deal with so much powerlessness, and i want to teach quinn how to use what power he does have, teach him that, “it is what you make of it” and the structure of self-paced learning at karate is helping him see how much control he can have over his learning.

both his classroom this year at school, and his dojo, are achieving some of the educational priorities i hold nearest and dearest, such as connection with his teachers and a sense of belonging.

though my favorite memory this month is not my shoulder injury, one bright spot in that particular evening at the dojo was the way quinn rushed to help me with carrying my bag, and holding doors for me.

one morning we parked at school several minutes early so quinn sat on my lap and snuggled while we finished a deathly hallows chapter. when i turned it off and took the keys out of the ignition, quinn tried to take them back, then got this twinkle in his eye and said, “i’ll roll you for your keys!” and i laughed so hard. our sifu uses that particular choice bit of slang (and other good ones… “you talkin’ mess?” for example… when he’s creating a scenario for using a given self defense technique). sifu had joked the previous night to quinn, about his new day-glow safety green karate hoodie, “i’ll roll you for that hoodie” but having q use it on me (and immediately start giggling uncontrollably) was hilarious.

and i will leave you with one final gem from the school spring concert, during which such rites of passage as 50 nifty united states, found a peanut, and the rattlin’ bog were sung. but this one really says it all!

 

make like a geek ~ piper’s toolbox

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i discovered piper’s toolbox thanks to an instagram post by a mama blogging friend, just in time for it to be the perfect birthday present for my delightfully geeky young man. there are plenty of blog posts covering the background and technical details of this amazing kit for aspiring young computer geeks, so i will just briefly say that this brilliant concept began as a kickstarter campaign and deserves all the success and recognition it has received.

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why do i say it’s brilliant? why, because they agree with me, of course! the young people behind piper feel that passive consumption of electronics is not going to do kids any favors when it comes to solving the engineering problems of tomorrow that they will face; the problems we don’t know about yet, so we can’t teach them the solutions, we have to teach them instead how to innovate their own. as a mama who wishes her son to see electronics as a tool to help him create, this kit takes my desire to a new level.

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i’ve listed examples of ways i encourage quinn to use technology as a tool, including stop motion animation, studying computer programming and math on khan academy, writing stories and game rules and making game cards. these activities all deviate from passive consumption by making the device and the software perform as tools that help us achieve a creative goal. the thing is, these activities are all still heavily dependent on software someone else designed, and a device that was made in a factory somewhere far away.

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piper gives a kid a blueprint, and everything they need to assemble their own very real computer.

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no reading is required, as the blueprint takes a page out of lego’s book and includes fully detailed schematic drawings…

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…and comes with a screwdriver…

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and all the parts you need. based on raspberry pi‘s brilliant technology, indeed, including one of these tiny, yet fully-equipped machines in the piper kit, as well as a power supply, screen, cute red mouse, and tiny green speaker, and various connect-y bits and buttons, piper invites your child to peek inside what’s really going on inside their electronics and learn to expand on them.

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that’s the raspberry pi, about the size of his hand. we had a great discussion about why the pi might not be housed inside the box that you build in step one, because that box doesn’t have any air holes. “oh yeah, because electronics probably need air, because of the fire that keeps them going.”

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i’m lucky to have grown up beside a computer geek, and my brother has fielded many of my computer questions from afar. moreso than that, what i have learned from him about open source software and about assembling one’s own hardware has really empowered me to tinker and continue on a learning path in what can be to many people an intimidating field. it’s all stuff that can be learned, it just takes a learner who is not fearful of making mistakes. making mistakes (and then fixing them in the next iteration) is what engineering is all about.

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after not even 24 hours had passed, quinn’s piper was built, wired and booting up. i witnessed (but did not get on camera) the look of pure wonder and pride when the screen powered on. the screen that he had installed and wired and screwed pieces of wood and hinges onto by his very own self.

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upon start up, piper drops you inside a minecraft game that guides you through several levels of tinkering. the premise of the game is that you have to get a disabled, defunct bit of technology (a robot sent into space decades earlier) to work and perform tasks. i think. it’s not like i actually played the game! this was parent hands-off time…

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one of the many skills our kids will need in the predicted world of mostly-STEM careers they will inhabit, is the ability to collaborate to solve problems. the day of his birthday party, quinn and his two friends were all over it, pitching in to hold wires together to make the robot go, and troubleshooting and brainstorming out loud for the next step.

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there’s also a need for self-reliance. after his buddies left and he lost his crew of people to touch different colored wires together to make his robot go forward and jump, he figured out how to wire up buttons in very short order, to do the same job as his friends had been doing. the goal is to empower kids to believe they can build electronics, that it is a medium in which they, too, can create, and piper achieves this beautifully.

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i can’t say enough good about this amazing educational tool. aside from the way piper encourages tinkering and problem-solving in young engineers, it is also a very interesting personality revealer. my boy has a tendency to sometimes think he already has the information, and so he found himself unscrewing and re-assembling parts quite a few times during the process, having jumped the gun before he really knew the plans throroughly. not necessarily a problem, but something to know about oneself. he can also sometimes struggle in dealing with setbacks and frustrations, such as the one time he stormed into the kitchen asking me for a sledgehammer, and it has really been a great teacher for him in so many more ways than just the obvious tech-y ones. he worked through all of those issues and when he was writing a thankful list the other night, his piper made the top ten. it’s clear to me that as he uses it and expands upon it, more opportunities for him to come up with emotionally appropriate responses to real challenges will arise.

because he has, and will continue to, use it extensively. although the piperbot minecraft game launches on startup, you can then plug in a usb keyboard (not included but you have one lying around already, right?) and head over to the main menu of the raspbian operating system and find pre-installed software for accomplishing those aforementioned creative goals: programming, word processing, drawing. minecraft pi is (according to q) almost the same as the standard minecraft he has played with friends, except with more materials in the inventory, and is also included on the software list. but that’s not where it ends… the software is all open source, so quinn, once he learns further programming skills (enabled by programs like scratch and sonic pi, on his piper) will be able to adapt and borrow code and come up with new and fabulous ways of creating with technology that haven’t even been tried yet. you know, like hacking a pottery kiln, or a piano, or (duh) a robot, or, you know, a new pancreas  or a wheelchair controlled by eye movement for a friend or family member.

as a side note, i observed on the piper forums (where i went to learn how to get to the main menu via keyboard and troubleshoot the wifi connection issue we were having) how the emotional iq revealing power of piper is not restricted to the children using this tool. parents posting in the forum sometimes displayed an extreme lack of emotional resilience in the face of a challenge, which to me only increases the evidence for the need for this type of learning; the expectation that something will “work” just out of the box without any tinkering necessary, misses the point of this tool entirely, and it’s interesting to see how quickly parents could lose sight of the goals when challenges arise. some could also use some nuance in communicating articulately the exact problem they are facing (“it doesn’t work” is so often not elaborated upon in the forums, it’s kind of creepy! come on, grown ups! represent!) if we want our kids to engage in outside-the-box-thinking, and embrace a platform for creativity rather than consumption, shouldn’t we set an example?

(she typed from her factory-built laptop that booted up windows 8 as soon as she pulled it out of the box… ahem.)

actually, there was even more representation of adults who “get it” in the forums, communicating well and cooperatively helping each other solve the problems their kids couldn’t handle alone, which is yet another reason i think this is a great learning tool that will see continued success. and so without further ado, go forth and geek out!