Cultivating Childhood

Ok, so I know I've mentioned a couple of times about our boys and their engineering endeavors, but I thought it was interesting what my husband wrote about why it is important to teach kids about programming to help develop their minds.  Here is a little peak: ...One of the most rewarding parts is watching [Buddy's] problem-solving abilities develop. Papert talks about how children are often afraid to try things for fear of failure, but Scratch teaches that debugging is a normal part of making things work. Rather than "does it work", the question becomes "how can we make it work?" This was demonstrated the other day (outside the context of Scratch) when he was putting together some Snap Circuits. Of course the goal is not to produce "little programmers". It's primarily about developing the ability to think systematically, but it extends beyond that into getting them thinking about thinking itself. In some sense once they're in the habit

My Mother's Day welcomed me with my oldest snuggling with me in my bed until it was time to wake up.  He rarely does this anymore, so it was a real treat. Once everyone was up, the boys were super excited about their "secret" cards they made me for Mother's Day.  Buddy explained that they were secret because I don't know what they look like, but it was okay that he told me that they had made cards.  Also, he added, "There may or may not be a heart on it.  You'll just have to wait and see!"  Button made a similar statement about happy faces.  =)  Well, I'm happy to report that I got two wonderful cards which not surprisingly feature hearts and smiley faces. Then, they gave me their gift.  I've written before about my future engineers , but this was beyond special.  With Daddy's help of course, they made me a light up LED heart.  So cool!  Daddy also gave me some chocolates that we shared. After church, we looked through

This week has been warm and sunny, so we got to pull out the tent.  On Tuesday, we decided to have an outdoor campout.  As we were preparing for our time, Button looked at Daddy and asked "How are we going to get our beds in the tent?"  He sort of figured it out when we all got in our sleeping bags to go to sleep, but around 9:30PM he begged us to let him go to bed.  So much for his first overnighter outside!  Next time, little guy!  Buddy, on the other hand, slept 11 hours straight. Also, this week, our church hosted a Parents Night Out.  Our kids were left with some awesome people and we parents got to go out on a date.  Woohoo!  Thanks Bethany North !  The boys are usually great with being left for short amounts of time, so I was surprised when I got a call during our dinner from the church.  Apparently, they were going to show a g-rated movie, and Buddy told them that he wasn't allowed to watch that movie because in his words, "We watch Mr. Rogers Neighborhoo

One of my favorite parts of coming out of winter is seeing all the new growth all around us.  It's made our nature study times quite fun.  One thing we did was walk the same trail at Ravenna Park and seen how the landscape is changing each time we go there.  Almost by accident, I took a picture of Buddy checking out the same branch on the same bush two months in a row.  Naturally, I wanted to go back and get the third.  Here is what we found... Valentine's Day growth Same branch at Ravenna Park on March 15 April 16 Also April 16 Now if only I knew what kind of tree/bush it is!  It appears to be all over the park and other places in Seattle so I'm guessing it is native.  Anyone know? Here's a picture of it.  The trunk isn't part of the bush, but it was in the way for the picture.

March seems like quite a long time ago that I needed to look at my pictures to remember what we did exactly.  This month was our first real month of settling into the preschool routine.  Button was done with his swim lessons, and the daily drive to and from Buddy's preschool was becoming a habit.  Really the only things that happened outside of our normal routine fell on the weekends when we got to do something fun with daddy. But then there was the big accomplishment!  Both boys learned to ride their pedal bikes without training wheels after having used their no-pedal bikes.  It was amazing how quickly they picked it up once their confidence grew.  Now, they are out riding their bikes an hour a day in our front yard, and are always eager to get outside.  Here are some videos of their first day. Other than our regular routine, we also of course frequented a few parks. Hamlin Paramount and Paramount Open Space Ravenna Golden Gardens More

When I woke up yesterday morning, I found my husband showing our three-year old how to light up a LED using a breadboard from his Raspberry Pi .  If that statement makes absolutely no sense to you, think about how I feel!  My three boys (the hubby and the two preschoolers) have been playing with this new-fangled contraption called Raspberry Pi which apparently is just basically a miniature computer. The Raspberry Pi is the green board.  The breadboard is the white one, and there is a miniature robot in the back from a previous project. They have hooked it up to a breadboard and used some of our snap circuits to make it do cool stuff.  The even did some soldering - a term I had to have explained to me by my five year old (I couldn't even figure out at first how to spell the word to write this blog post!).  In addition, my not-yet-kindergartener is taking this Pi and using software called Scratch to do some simple drag-and-drop programming.  This is waaaay beyond my underst