Catching Up in Body and Mind

Isaac has been reading voraciously.  I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it's true!  He has passed up opportunities to play video games or watch TV to READ!  Saturday night, with about 45  minutes to kill between finishing his project and meeting a friend for dinner, he sat and read until we had to leave.  Sunday afternoon after coming home from a friend's house, rather than choose to chill out with the TV on, he sat and read.  Yesterday, when I asked him what he wanted to do when we got home, since we were leaving school  3 hours early, he said he wanted to come home and read.  And he did -- for about two hours!

I have been dumbfounded.  I sent Matt a text Sunday night with this picture, and the question "How do I fuss at him for not getting his lunch ready when this is what he is doing?"

Normally, I have to pull him away from Netflix to finish chores, not from a book.  And it is not just with reading that we have noticed a change.  Last night he practiced his drums without a fight.  And actually played and practiced his rhythms for sustained periods rather than 30 seconds at a time.

So to what do we owe this miraculous shift?  One thing, I think, is the return to a routine.  The weeks since Winter Break have been a roller coaster.  We have only had one full week of school on a regular schedule due to delays, early dismissals and cancellations.  Those interruptions have wreaked havoc -our sleep schedules are off, we have not been eating as well as we should, chores have been left undone, and the feeling of lethargy that took over has been hard to shake.  I need a routine to function well.  Not one that is inflexible, but one that gives me structure so I know what needs to get done and what the time frame is for doing it.  If I, an almost 40 year old adult, have been completely knocked off kilter by the past few weeks, then I can only imagine how Isaac has felt.  

I also think the weather over the weekend helped.  Isaac spent most of Saturday and Sunday outside.  Exercise and sun are good for our bodies and are brains, and I know the lack of both has made me more tired and cranky and unmotivated.  So, why wouldn't it be the same, or worse, for an 8 year old?

But I also think Isaac is maturing.  Not that at 8 1/2 he has all of a sudden reached an age when the hard times will come again no more.  But I forget that he is one of the youngest in his class.  He probably is the youngest boy, actually.  Some of the kids are almost a year older than him, and when you are 8 and 9 that can make a huge difference.  Third grade is a hard adjustment and he is only now reaching the age that most of his classmates were when school started.  His brain and his body finally seem to be catching up to the demands that school is placing on them.

There have also been some external motivators and confidence builders that have given him a new way to see himself.  We found out two weeks ago that he qualified for the AG program.  This was important to him because his friends are also in AG - not because to him it meant that he really is smart.  But getting that affirmation in the form of acceptance into a special group did, I think, slightly alter how Isaac views his abilities.

Whatever the reasons for the recent love of reading and increase in attention, I am thankful for them.  Of course, we are out of school again for a snow day so there goes our routine.  Isaac slept late and decreed when he got up that he would be spending the day in his pajamas.  It sounded good to me and I was even looking forward to sitting down and watching a movie this morning.  Instead, Isaac wanted to download the next Wimpy Kid book so he could try to finish the series.  So, as I finish this post, he is in the other chair reading.  Sounds like a pretty good way to spend a snow day.  I think I will join him.

Accomplishments

Isaac had two projects due this week, a timeline and a Reading Fair display.  One was assigned by the teacher, the other was optional -- but when your mom is the librarian and she is hosting a Reading Fair and asking for voluntary submissions, it's not voluntary.

Luckily, the snow helped us get ahead on the timeline project, so we were not rushed to finish everything up over the weekend.  Isaac researched Ellen Ochoa and created a timeline of important events from her life.  He could choose to make any kind of timeline he wanted to, so I found a website that we could make one digitally.  I try to help him find ways to use technology for projects like this, partly to give him the experience and partly to search out new tools that I may want to use with classes.  We used timetoast.com for his timeline.  It was pretty simple, but it has some limitations that will prevent me from using it with students at school, namely it lacks an educator component that would allow teachers to set up student accounts and keep projects private and it is not set up to accept dates for which you only have a year.  Isaac did a good job once he buckled down to work.  We even managed to get it turned in early!

With the timeline out of the way, we focused on his Reading Fair project.  Typically, when I "asked" Isaac if he was going to do a Reading Fair project, he said no.  Then Matt talked him into doing one if I would let him use the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not book that was on the Book Fair.  If it meant he would do a project, I was willing.  Around the same time Isaac was reading a book from the I Survived series by Lauren Tarshish, and on the Book Fair there was a value pack that contained most of the series.  Since I will jump at any opportunity to encourage Isaac to read, we bought the set.  The first one he read was The Attacks of September 11, 2001.  We had visited the memorial over the summer, so I thought the connection may interest him enough to convince him to use that book for his project.  I was pleasantly surprised that I was right.

Because I was pretty much forcing him to do this extra work, I increased the amount of help I was willing to offer.  I let him dictate what he wanted to say while I typed to save both of us aggravation and stress, and oodles of time.  Otherwise, it was Isaac's vision that we used to create the final product.  He had an image of the towers and the smoke and that is what we made.  I was worried at first that maybe it would be too disturbing to recreate that scene in 3D on his display.  But I realized that to him, and to all of his classmates, it is just that -- an image.  It is real to me and the other teachers, but what is more real to Isaac is the hole in the ground and the fountain that we saw a few months ago.  So, we made towers out of foam board and painted them to look grayish-silver, and made smoke from batting and construction paper.  

I was impressed by how Isaac worked on the Reading Fair display, especially since he ended up doing it so willingly, as opposed to the cajoling and whining that was involved in getting the timeline completed.  The difference, I am sure, was the connection he had with the book and the fact that, despite my initial mandate, it was something he chose to do.  Because, really, if he had fought me on it, I would have caved.  

We ended up having fun working on it together and he felt a sense of accomplishment when it was ready for display.  It wasn't the most elaborate or polished project submitted, but it was genuinely his work.  It is something he is proud of and is a boost to his confidence.  And it makes Mom feel pretty good, too.

Teaching Failure

It can be hard teaching your child to fail.  Not that you actively teach him to do his worst and seek out defeat.  But he needs to learn how to fail because there are times that he will.  Matt and I have tried to approach failure realistically, letting Isaac know that we have both failed more times than we can count.  But we are also teaching him to find his strengths and to find success in results that other people may view as failings.

The Male Bakeoff theme for this year was something to do with the beach (I can't remember the exact wording, but it involved clever wordplay).  Upon hearing what the theme was, Isaac decided he wanted to make "Sharknado."  Very loose beach connection, but why not?  So, he and Matt worked out a plan and they created their masterpiece out of rice crispie treats, cotton candy and gummy sharks.  It was pretty impressive. (It was also recreated after a major structural fail the morning of the Bakeoff, but that is another story.)

One thing to note about the planning that goes into the Cravey men's Bakeoff entries -- how edible it will be is not necessarily considered.  I am not sure if the judges actually tasted the "Sharknado," but they were impressed enough by its appearance to award it the "Weirdness Cup."  Isaac was thrilled.  And he now has a mug to match his dad's set.

Later that week, the "People's Choice" awards for the Bakeoff were announced and Isaac got his second trophy -- 3rd Place People's Choice.  You would have thought that he had won the lottery, he was so excited.

After the Bakeoff, we turned our attention to the Pinewood Derby.  There are incidents in Matt's past that caused him great anxiety about this event, and since neither of us are skilled with power tools, we were not looking forward to it.  Isaac and I browsed Pinterest for inspiration and he found a car design that I felt confident we, with our limited skills, could handle.  Thankfully, we had help from some very generous fellow scouts and church members and managed to get the car ready for the big day.  We knew it probably wouldn't win any races, but Matt and I were keeping our fingers crossed that it would at least not be last in every race.

Isaac was visibly nervous before his first run, so I don't think he heard the race announcer comment that car #61 was one of the most original he had seen in all of his years working with the Derby.  Isaac's car placed 4th in his Den, so no racing trophy.  But later that day, when the final awards were announced, he walked out with a monster of a "Most Original Car" trophy, and a huge grin on his face.

In case you can't tell from the picture, Isaac's car was an ice cream sandwich.  Thank goodness for Pinterest and for Paul Hicks!

To put both events in the perspective of our family's view of competitions like these, the harder other people try to take it seriously, the harder we try to make it fun.  This is not to say that we are not competitive.  Put a board game on the table and the claws come out!  But we know our strengths, and we play to them well.  We know that we will not be the best tasting, the fastest, the most polished, professional looking competitor.  But we can make something that will be memorable.  We find success in bringing humor to what can become a tense competition and putting smiles on people's faces.  

Isaac is a smart, talented kid.  But there are things he is not good at, too, and he needs to learn to accept those weaknesses so that he can make the most of his strengths.  This is something that Matt and I are still learning how to do ourselves, so maybe Isaac could have better teachers.  But we are what he was given, so we will do our best to teach him to fail with humor and grace.  If we can do that, then we will have succeeded.

Let's Play!

Seeing an idea that was mentioned as a "wouldn't it be nice if we could" kind of possibility at a beginning of the year staff meeting come to fruition is wonderfully satisfying.  In August, sitting with two new teachers at my school as we began to prepare for the school year, the subject of board games came up and how valuable games like chess are for students to learn.  We have been playing a lot of board games at home over the past few years, so I shared that there were a lot of other strategy games that are great for kids.

This conversation led to the idea of starting a game club if we could find a way to buy games.  This possibility led me to create a Donors Choose project to buy games for a club, which Matt shared on Reddit and which the Reddit board game community funded within 24 hours.  This support led to a board game club that met at school for 3 and a half months, two days a week, involving almost 40 children.

The game club ended today.  In the fall and spring I help lead GOFAR, so the game club filled the months in between.  It has been one of the best things I have done as a teacher.  It was so much fun to see the kids get excited about new games and to be able to interact with them while playing.  I am sorry to have reached the last day.

Some of the students came to game club with experience playing some of the games, but most hadn't played anything more challenging than Monopoly or Yahtzee.  After a few weeks they each had a favorite new game.  I wouldn't let them get settled playing the same thing week after week, though.  I made them try new games and their favorites shifted as their repertoire grew.

Many of the games I bought for the club I had played before.  Most Isaac had played,as well, so I knew they were on the ability level of the students I would have in the club.  I also brought additional games from home and introduced the kids to some cooperative games.  Even today I brought in a new game and it was a hit.

Some kids asked for games from game club for Christmas and were even trying to convince parents to buy something they had played this week so they could keep playing at home.  I stopped counting how many times I was asked if we could do another game club.   

All of this from a chance conversation back in August.  You never know what can happen if you don't stop after the "wouldn't it be nice if we could" thought.

So here are the games we played:

Settlers of Catan

TransAmerica

Tsuro

Mondo

Carcassonne

Love Letters

Befuzzled

Fluxx

Labrynth

Chess

Cirkus

Othello

Mancala

Farkle

Castle Panic

Forbidden Island

The Resistance

Uno

Yahtzee

Dizios

Pecking Order

Smash Up

Don't Judge a Book By Its Pictures

One plea I would make to parents, and teachers, is to continue to read picture books to and with kids long past the age when you think they should be reading "harder" books.  I get disheartened when I see third, second and even first graders pass over great picture books because they want to read, or have been told they should be reading, chapter books.  If I had it my way, chapter books would be banned until third grade at the earliest so kids could have a couple of extra years to soak up some of the wonderful books that are out there for them.

There is a misconception that picture books are "easy" and just for little kids.  Many teachers believe that students need to read chapter books to build stamina.  But there are picture books being published by amazing authors and illustrators that are sophisticated and complex.  Some are very text heavy, despite the 28-32 page, illustrated format.  Others may have simpler text, but the layers of meaning in the simple lines require a level of comprehension far beyond what is needed to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants, or other "brain break" books.

A few weeks ago, Isaac thought he would simplify our bedtime reading by pulling a picture book off the shelf.  The first one he picked was ridiculously easy for him, but it was by Mo Willems so I did not argue.  Since that book only took about five minutes to read, I sent him back for another.  This time he brought back Dear Mrs. Larue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague.  Little did Isaac know what he was in for.

This book is a brilliant picture book that is great for teaching letter writing, point of view and persuasion, among other concepts. Ike Larue is a badly behaved dog who has been sent to obedience school by his overwhelmed owner.  Upon arrival, he begins a series of letters, postcards and other missives to lament his imprisonment, insist upon his innocence and beg to be allowed to return home.  What makes the book so multi-faceted is that Teague is telling two stories, one in words and one in pictures -- what Ike says is not necessarily what Ike does.  So the reader has to interpret what really happened  and what is actually the truth.

Isaac thought he was getting off easy by picking picture books to read that evening before bed.  But even though Dear Mrs. Larue took more effort than he was planning to put into his reading that night, he ended up really liking the book and tried to find the sequel in the library the next morning.

Kids really do love picture books, even if they think they are too old for them.  When my older students have an opportunity to read to younger students, they have a great time finding a picture book to share.  There are authors who are writing picture books, fiction and nonfiction, that are as complex as they are beautiful.  And even if the child chooses a picture book that is below their reading level, it's okay.  Their brains may need the break.  They will snack on the pictures and maybe even some rhyming text, then come back to the novels when they are ready for something more substantial and fulfilling.  Kids' reading diets need to be varied to keep them interested.  Not every meal needs to be four courses of gourmet options.  Cheese and crackers will suffice now and then, and afterwards the haute cuisine will seem that much better.

So keep the picture books around longer than you think you need to.  And read them.  Please.  For the kids.