The Lightning Thief

Excitement for the arrival of The Lightning Thief movie has reached fever pitch in both my classroom and my home. Kiddos of all ages (and I literally mean all ages, as I include myself in this group) are eagerly awaiting President’s Day to flock to the theaters and enjoy this adaptation. Just this morning, my 8yo was showing my 4yo the trailer on TV, and I overheard the following conversation:

4yo: Who’s Tercy?
8yo: Not Tercy. Percy!
4yo: Who’s Percy?
8yo: He’s a half-blood.
4yo: What’s a half-blood?
8yo (starting to get exasperated): The son of a god!
4yo: He’s Jesus?

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Lunchtime!

I eat my Subway sandwiches from the inside out!

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart

As much as I complain on Twitter and Facebook about being cold during Hawaii’s winter season (and, for that matter, anytime the temperature dips below 75deg), there are perks to the cold weather. 

For one thing, I get to haul out my sweaters and jackets that are typically smashed in the back of my closet. For another, ice cream tastes weirdly good when the air is freezing cold. By far the best thing, though, is when I say I’m cold and my 4yo goes, “It’s ok, mom, come snug with me.”    

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Poisoned!

So, this weekend was pretty rough. It started out promisingly enough. The 8yo was sleeping over at Aunty’s house with the cousins. We had a soccer game to go to and karate practice to attend. Sunday stretched ahead without any real plans.
All that came to a halt when the 4yo got food poisoning from some fried saimin that had probably been sitting too long in a warmer. Poor little guy could not hold down a thing…not even water. His Friday night and Saturday were spent either napping or in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, I did not escape food poisoning either. By late morning on Saturday, I was in the worst shape I’d been in in a long time.
But all’s well that ends well. I’m thankful to my brother and sister in law who kept the 8yo an additional night. I’m thankful that the 4yo bounced back fairly quickly. I’m thankful that food poisoning has a shelf life of about 24-48 hours.

And I’m really thankful that my kiddos were happy to see each other on Sunday and played quietly so that I could rest a few more hours!
Our weekends…never a dull moment to be had.

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Blu-Ray Excitement

I remember being excited to get a Beta when I was their age!

“Oh, yeah…this is what I’m talking about! T-Rex!”

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Karaoke Night

My family has recently re-discovered a love of karaoke. It all started with an innocent Wii game. Then it progressed to a second game, discussions about a larger karaoke system, and going through Karaoke On Demand like there’s no tomorrow. In fact, we planned a dinner get together around a karaoke “sing off.”

While singing tonight, the kids found Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier. Here’s the lyrics as sung by them:

Buffalo Soldier, brought to America. Fighting from arrival. Fighting for SALIVA. I’m not sure Bob would appreciate the rewrite.

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Playing Ball in Heaven

Conversations about death with kids suck. 

There’s just no getting around it. We can talk about heaven, and how beautiful it is, how many family members are waiting there and watching over us, and how our souls live forever. It’s just our bodies that stay back on earth. 

But we all know kids don’t buy it. All they know is that their pet fish went to the great fish bowl in the sky and isn’t coming back.  

So the other night my 4yo is in bed, talking about how much he misses Rocksy, the family dog, and how she’s probably playing ball with Pop (his great grandpa) in heaven. All of a sudden he asks, “How does Pop play ball if he’s only a head?”

That took me by surprise. “A head?” I asked him, “What do you mean, Pop’s only a head?”

“You said,” he answered, patiently, “that our body stays here on Earth. So, our head goes to heaven.”

4 year old logic. Can’t beat it.  

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Blogging for Students

Finally! I have the beginnings of a Reader’s Blog.

Blogging was so successful last school year that I was certain to get a head start on it in August. Well, August came and went, and no blog for my students. Edublogs worked wonderfully last year. I could oversee the students’ posts without micromanaging and balance online safety with a sense of independence for the children.

This year, I needed to become a “supporter” to have those same capabilities. What’s a cash-strapped, budget-crunching teacher to do? Jump the proverbial ship, of course.

I tried a number of blogging platforms, but none had exactly what I needed as a teacher. Until I came across Kidblog.org, a FREE and easy site for classblogs.

It’s simple enough for first time student bloggers, offers nice privacy settings for teachers, and eliminates extras such as themes and widgets. For this last reason, seasoned bloggers may not like it, but it really helps to keep the focus on the content for our younger bloggers.

Best of all, our DOE servers are not blocking it as a “social- networking site,” like many other fantastic resources I would love to use in the classroom. Nothing kills the students’ enthusiasm faster than “technical difficulties!”

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The App of the Year

I love lots of apps that I get from the App Store. Everything you could possibly want…”there’s an app for that.” (With maybe the exception of Flash. Are you listening Apple?) But Ustream Live Broadcaster definitely hits it out of the park. As a teacher, the thing I am most concerned about after my students is parent communication. We have lots of opportunities for parents to come and hear about what their children are learning, but it’s a completely different experience to see it. As such, we post lots of pictures on our grade level website; everything from field trips to day to day life in the classroom. We even have a few video clips, raw, to be sure, but fun for families to watch once the event has been recorded and archived. Ustream Live Broadcaster, however, has made it possible for families to watch while it happens.

We first experimented with Ustream during our Curriculum Night. The turnout, typically, at 5th grade is fairly low, but that doesn’t mean that people are not interested. Cooking dinner or taking care of the children at home takes precedence, as well it should. Ustreaming Curriculum Night meant that our families did not have to choose or go out of their way to do both. We were also very lucky to have a parent (Thank you again @ParkRat!) who was willing to help us get equipment set up and video tape while we were sharing. 

With the app for iPhone, I’ve been able to live stream both our Market Day event and a Winter Assembly at school. Did I mention live? Families can see what their children are doing and learning, and they don’t have to wait for us, the teachers, to get home, go through the footage, and upload it to our website. It’s the next best thing to being there in person. And setting it up? Easy as pie. I just go to the Ustream website, schedule a show, get the embed code, and copy paste to our website. Then I start up the app on my iPhone, and shoot. If you can copy and paste and hit the record button, you can use Ustream. It has been one of the simplest, easiest, most economical (it’s a free app!) ways to communicate with parents and the larger school community. 

My Ustream Live Broadcaster plans for 2010? You can be sure our families will be seeing lots of our field trips and other in-school events…live.

Move Over Wordle…

A little late for the holiday season, but ImageChef is an interesting take on word clouds. There are other capabilities, but this was nice and quick. It took all of 30 seconds. Check it out!