Although, for us, vacation is pretty much whenever we feel like it. In this case, I was done with my semester on December 14th, so at that point the boys and I
kinda took it easy on schoolwork (although since I had more time to devote to helping them, we took some opportunities to study anyway).
Kart RacingWe celebrated Zander's birthday by taking him to a local indoor kart racing track called RPM Racing. Eight is their minimum age, so we bought both boys the Junior Membership, which includes training and track time.
The boys, of course, had a blast. They raved about it to Grandpa Stan, who very generously gave all three boys (including me) race passes for three more races each for Xmas. We have used two so far and are saving the last one for a time when Mommy can come watch.
Xmas TimeWe were also eagerly anticipating Xmas, though our schedule was going to be a bit crazy. Mommy has been planning a trip to India and Bangladesh to conduct research for her Master's thesis for some time now, and as it turns out, she was set to leave on December 26th! So, the boys and I did our normal thing (with a little shopping thrown in) until Xmas Eve, when we had a nice dinner with Grandpa Stan and relatives from Southern California. Then we had Xmas Day to ourselves, and the boys made out like bandits.
Mommy, however, eventually had to finish packing, and then the next day we drove her to SFO for the start of her big adventure. We spent the day after
that with Grandpa Dave, my sisters and their families. After that, the boys and I were on our own for the next three weeks. We had a nice New Year's Eve; the boys managed to stay up to watch the ball drop and drink sparkling apple and blueberry juice. Woohoo!
"Vacation"While Mommy was away and our friends were on break from public school, we decided to take a break as well. We have very few rules about what HAS to get done during any particular school day; part of our approach is to allow as much time as possible for any particular project or area of interest for the day, the other part is to not force the children to do things they hate in the name of "education." However, we do find it useful to require the children to earn "screen time" (which includes TV, non-educational computer, and video games) by reading or working on workbooks. So, we still tried to keep from zombifying ourselves, but didn't enforce the usual screen time rules.
The boys are still going to karate, however, and part of the program involves encouraging the students to keep up with chores by recording daily progress on a chart. Once the chart is complete, they can turn it in for a special star-shaped patch that they can sew on their
gi. Students can earn different-colored stars for lots of different things, including good grades (gold star), consistent attendance (silver star), reading a certain number of books (navy blue star), or helping the dojo (red star). The boys decided to be a little more consistent about earning the chore-chart star for the month of January. We're still working on it, but it helped us initiate a daily karate-practice routine combined with some exercise.
MiscellaneousIn the meantime, we have spent some time on learning! Adon is interested in astronomy, so he spent his Barnes and Noble Xmas gift card on two astronomy books. He also got a cool science kit from Grandpa Dave and Grandma Tina, which has been really fun to set up and fool around with.
Zander continues to come up with funny ideas for video mash-ups and animations, so we have been trying to follow up on that as much as possible, but what I really want is for him to use the tools we have for video capture and editing to make his vision a reality. Being an eight-year-old boy in this day and age, however, he has little patience for anything that takes too long or too much effort or explaining. He just wants his imagination to spring to life as soon as he utters the concept. So I have been easing him into it a bit at a time, working with him on simple stuff that he can learn to do himself, yet not berating him or doing it FOR him when his attention flags. Sometimes he gets into it and follows through, sometimes he gets distracted and bails. You can see some of the results on
our YouTube page.
Both boys are also writing books. We were talking about our goals for the new year, and I mentioned that I want to write, paint, and draw more, in addition to my studies in grad school. Adon piped up and said that he wanted to be a writer, too. He wants to write songs and books, so we started talking about some of his ideas, and I finally (gently) pointed out that if he wanted to be a writer, he needed to actually write some of this stuff down! So he went straight to the computer and began a new book. Zander couldn't be left out and started his own book too.
Last week we went to Explorit in Davis again. This time, the theme was "Exploring our Universe." Adon had a field day. At one point he even corrected the instructor when she showed us a picture of a quasar and called it a black hole. She asked him (in a typical teacher's "oh, yeah?" voice) what a quasar is, and he nailed it. The other parents mentioned later how impressed they were, but they were all homeschoolers too, and it's just one example of what a kid can do when they learn on their own terms.
