claire

Monkey Mail

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Claire’s kindergarten class now has an internal mail system up and running.  The kids can send each other notes in the classroom’s mailbox.  So far, Claire has received several letters from her classmates, and they all say, “You are a great friend.”

I was talking about Monkey Mail with some of Claire’s classmates’ parents, and they said their kids all get the same message, “You are a great friend.”  And they always have a picture of the two kids standing next to each other.  It is very sweet.  Here is a perfect example.

Computer Claire

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In the past, Claire has had only passing interest in computers and video games.  She had tried some Wii games and mildly enjoyed Wii Music and Wii Fit, especially the Yoga exercises.  And she kind of likes playing some non-competitive kids games on the iPhone and iPad.  But seemed to find most games frustratingly difficult, and did not have much interest in the big desktop computer, our iMac, with its tricky mouse and keyboard.

But Claire has recently discovered the joys of playing web-based kids’ games on the big computer.  Her interest seems to have grown since kindergarten started.  She has computer class once a week and has gotten comfortable with the mouse and keyboard.  She says the hardest part is logging in.

At home, she started playing web games related to books and TV shows.  She started out with Fancy Nancy and moved on to Ni-Hao, Kai-Lan on Nick Jr.  Since Kai-Lan, Claire started exploring other games on Nick Jr, including Dora the Explorer and Fresh Beat Band.

Kit and I were concerned about a couple of things with this new enthusiasm for the computer.  One was that all her “clicking around” (as we say) and generally messing the computer could delete/damage/send/export our stuff.  She could delete a file, send an unexpected email, post gibberish on Kit’s Facebook feed, and so on.  So we set Claire up with her own account where can’t touch/delete/damage/send/export our stuff.  She likes having her own account and always logs into it to do her games.

We were also concerned about “exploring” the internet in general.  But the computer is right here in the loving room where we can see what she is up to, and the account has some nice parental controls built in.  Claire really just sticks to nickjr.com, etc. so this has not been a problem so far.

We were also concerned about how much time she would spend on the computer.  But on weekdays, she only has about 30 minutes of free-form time to herself before bed, and she often uses that for computer time.  She just doesn’t have more time available than that.  On weekends, she has more time on the computer, and much of that is borrowed from time she would otherwise spend watching TV.  Personally, I prefer seeing Claire do mentally active, creative computer games over sitting, just watching TV anyways.  Let’s exercise those brain cells!  This is within limits, of course.  If Claire is like me, she may one day want to stay up all night doing “computer”, which is not always a good thing (yawn).

The Librarian and Mrs. Katrune

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We went over to Pease Park this morning, as we often do on the weekends.  At the park, Claire met another girl of similar age on the playground, and after a certain amount of persistence, Claire got the other girl to play with her.  Whenever we go to the park, there is almost always one other about girl Claire’s age, and they always hit it off, at least after some initial sizing up.  Claire’s technique used to be to simply ask the girl, “Do you want to play with me?”  Now she has refined her approach.  She followed the other girl around the playground, suggesting different play ideas until she finally hooked the other girl into playing.  This one was a tough customer, a being a little shy and wrapped up in her new barbie bike, but eventually Claire snagged her.

As a sample of how this kind of thing goes, here is how it went today…

Claire had brought along some of her books to the park, and the winning idea this time around was to pretend that they had secretly stolen some books from the library.  I, being the nearest adult, was obviously cast as the librarian.  I gave myself the name Mr. Potter.  I explained that they were free to check the books out of the library and didn’t have to sneak them out.  But that was a silly suggestion.  What fun would that be?  That is such crusty adult thinking!  There would be no drama if they simply checked out some books.  That is no kind of game at all.  No, they snuck the books out.

To add to the drama, they had also snuck some books away from a teacher.  I suggested Molly, who was wondering around babbling, could be the teacher.  I asked Claire what the teacher’s name was.  Claire instantly came up with Mrs. Katrune.  So there was poor Mrs. Katrune (Molly) wandering around the playground looking for her missing books.  Claire and her friend got to hide the books and run away when Mrs. Katrune approached, and all other manner of fun.  In truth they were very careful with the books, although they made some dramatic references to the books getting damaged.  I occasionally put up a protest that I needed my books back, or they better at least check them out properly!

Eventually, this game ran its course, and the girls ran around and did swings, etc.  Eventually even that ran its course, and they tried to figure out ways to make each other giggle.  At one point, the other girl briefly pulled her pants down, causing a roar from herself and Claire.  Claire thought this was cool and started to do the same.  I had to step in and stop the madness.  This was technically a new, previously unstated rule: keep your pants on in the park!  The other girl’s dad, who had been absorbed by his own toddler as well, came over at that point and reinforced the keep-you-pants-on rule.  The girls continued to push the limits in less risqué ways, such as running to the edge of the park close to the road.  Molly was also getting especially reckless as this point, and it was clearly time to leave.

So there is it, the ups and downs of a day at the park with the girls.  It was a fun, delightful, perplexing day at the park which really needed to end about 20 minutes ago.

Favorite Books #2

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A relatively new installment in this blog is to make a quick note, every few months, of the girls’ favorite books.  Here is installation number 2.  There, it’s official.  This is a regular thing now. 🙂

Claire has recently started to read her own books to us, but we still like to read to her every night too.  Claire’s favorite series right now is Fancy Nancy.  She gets a new Fancy Nancy book from the school library about once a week.  The recent sampling includes Fancy Nancy and the Late, Late, LATE Night, Fancy Nancy: Halloween…or Bust!, Fancy Nancy: The 100th Day of School, and Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris.  Occasionally we buy a Fancy Nancy book, and sometimes they have stickers, and she’ll put one or two stickers on the pages of the book (never anywhere else) each night until nearly every open space in the book is covered by a sticker.

Molly has also been enjoying a series, in her case Elmer.  Elmer is a colorful, patchwork elephant.  He loves to explore his world and point out the colors, sizes, numbers, etc. of the animals around him.  Elmer always ends up going to sleep at the end of the story.  Molly also loves Corduroy, which is one of those sweet classic kids’ stories that is always fun to read.  When the stuffed animal Corduroy pops the button off a mattress and falls off the bed, Molly loves to say, “Oh no!  Bear fell down!”  Perhaps not coincidentally, Claire also used to love both Elmer and Corduroy as a toddler.  This pair cannot be resisted by the toddler set!

Claire’s Turn to Read

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It’s time one again to see what Claire and Molly are reading these days…

And when I saw “what Claire is reading”, I really mean it.  She is reading to us some every night.  She is bringing home a different I-can-read type of book from school every week and reads to us each night before we read a book to her.  These learning books cover topics such as “Play Dough”, and are repetitive, featuring a similar sentence on each page, as in:

    I can make a pancake with my play dough.
    I can make a hamburger with my play dough.
    etc.

These are not page-turners, but still, it is very exciting to see Claire read.  She mostly has these books memorized, but she does have a new-found reading confidence and does also like to attempt unknown books, slowly sounding out the words and figuring them out on her own more often than not.  She seems to enjoy the challenge but wears out pretty quickly, after only a few words.  Reading is tough work when it’s a new skill!

Claire likes to occasionally being up additional reading and phonics topics such as “the silent E” and “people who’s names also start with C”.

Halloween 2011

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This year, for the first time since Claire was a baby, we actually did trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood.  In the past, Claire has preferred to go trick-or-treating with friends in their neighborhood, but it did not work out this year on account of it being a Monday and not having time to get something like that together.  Claire handled the disappointment of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with her family pretty well. 🙂

The dynamic duo working a house

Accordingly, it was the slowest, most low-key Halloween we have had in a long time.  Instead of running and giggling wildly with her friends, Claire, dressed as a fairy-Barbie, paced slowly along with us from house to house, keeping in good spirits but not getting to crazy.  In fact, Claire was so slow that she wasn’t even keeping up with Kit and me, and I was walking slowly from an injured knee (trampoline injury).  We think Claire was tired, maybe from the recent carnival.  Molly, dressed up as a ladybug, didn’t know quite what was going on, be whatever it was was pretty fun.  She and Claire go to go to each house together a team, where Claire would ring the doorbell, and they would wait someone to come.  While waiting for the candy, Molly tended to turn around a make sure Kit and I were still there waiting behind them.  Molly didn’t necessarily know she was even candy, but she did enjoy the process of collecting nice, wrapped objects in her little bag.  She did not actually eat any of her candy.  We do actually want to fatten her up, but not on Snickers and Blow Pops (yet).

This being a late night close on the heals the carnival, Kit and Molly pealed off around 7:30 to get Molly to sleep and hour late.  Claire and I kept going for a while.  Once home, Claire got to answer the door for some trick-or-treaters and distribute some candy, a duty which she seemed to prize.  Claire strategized about the order in which to consume her candy, two pieces per day, and ten went

Molly got to wear her costume to school

Claire’s very favorite treat was some crazy vampire teeth

Claire (and Kit and I) decorated a pumpkin
as Cinderella for a school project

Carnival!

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We all got to go to our first carnival for Claire’s school tonight!  This was a big, crazy shindig to raise money for the school.  After weeks of volunteer forms, raffles, meetings, and contests, the carnival finally manifested itself tonight between 5:30 and 8:30.  Usually Molly starts to bed at 6:30, and Claire at 7:30, but we went wild tonight and let them stay out for the carnival until about 8:30!

Claire had lots of fun doing a giant, bouncy slide and basically just jumping around and giggling with her friends.  Molly also had fun, but she did not get to actually do a whole other than watch other people have fun, but that was still pretty good.  Molly loved watching the aforementioned giant, bouncy slide, and she yelled and cheered like a cheerleader as each kid come down the slide.

The end of the night included some meltdowns from out tires, weary carnival-goers, as expected for a late, exciting night.  Claire’s happened when the haunted house was closed and we could not go into it, even though lots of people were still in the house at the time.  They had stopped taking in new customers since the wait was an hour, and the fair was going to close before that.  To Claire, this did not seem quite right.  Molly didn’t care about the haunted house, but she was getting tired and cranky in her own right.  So we got home and tossed the kids in bed and discovered that we were exhausted too.  But we had an awfully fun night and pitched in a little bit of money for the school in the process.

Getting Clean by Getting Messy

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I missed this misadventure personally since I was off working, but apparently Molly and Claire discovered the whiteboard cleaner that had been sitting by their art/whiteboard easel.  The first thing they did was clean the heck out of the whiteboard.  Logical enough, right?  They sprayed it and wiped it, sprayed it and wiped it, until it was absolutely spotless.  Then they decided to clean the floor.  They used up so much cleaner that eventually a small puddle of it formed on the floor beneath them.  By this time, they were giggling and feeling extremely silly, and Molly was sliding around in the cleaner and having trouble getting on her feet.

This was just too much fun, and since they still had some cleaner left, and Molly had the bottle of cleaner, it was up to her to decide what to clean next.  What do you think would be the next logical thing to clean?  A window?  A countertop?  Well, Molly thought her own face would be fun to try.  She pointed the sprayer at herself and repeatedly sprayed the non-toxic cleaner all over her face, much to the delight of herself and Claire.  Apparently there was lots of giggling.  Kit had thought all the giggling was just from playing around, but at this point she went over and had to take the cleaner away.  Molly’s face was clean very clean and, I assume, completely free of dry erase markings.

We were a little concerned, and we checked on Molly throughout the night, but she was fine.  That stuff really is non-toxic, thankfully.  This was as a good reminder not to leave the bug spray laying around!

Claire Interview #2

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One of Claire’s school projects a couple of weeks ago gave me the idea to include a series of “interviews” with Claire.  These are going to be quick Q&A sessions with Claire (and eventually Molly).  Along this theme, I bought a “Kid’s Chat Pack” at a store recently.  The pack is is a deck of dozens of little cards that you can pull, each card containing a random question to ask someone (ostensibly a kid) to start a conversation.

I wasn’t sure Claire would be into this idea, but when I proposed asking her a few questions from the Chat Pack, she loved the idea and asked me to keep going as we got into it.  We did this while driving to pick up Molly from school a couple of days ago.  Below are some of Claire’s answers, at least the ones that I can remember.

Q: Suppose you always had to use the sound of a farm animal to great people, instead of saying “hi”.  What sound would you use?
A: The sounds of a cute duck quacking

Q: What particular quality above all others do you look for when choosing your friends?
A: A good heart, because that’s where their love comes from

Q: If you could bring to life any creature that is now extinct or any imaginary creature, what would it be?
A: A dinosaur
(I was surprised she didn’t say a fairy, but I think she was focusing on the “extinct” part)

Q: If you could choose one item and be guaranteed that it would never break, wear out, or get lost, what would you choose?
A: My daddy!
(This was very sweet, but I had the advantage of being right in front of her as she answered this question!  She often answers based on what she sees.)

Q: What do you think is the worst thing you could eat before getting your teeth cleaned by the dentist?
A: A house!
(She said this loudly and laughing wildly.  This answer was a sign that the interview was losing steam…)