Second Trimester Awards : The Sprite A winner

Today was the Kindergarten Awards Day for the second trimester and our little over-achiever took home not one, but two awards certificates.

The Sprite shows off his awards

One was for Excellence In Writing and the other was for a Perfect Attendance Record. The first comes as no surprize really, he has been coming along leaps and bounds with reading and writing lately. The second is astounding, compared to recent history. To not miss a single day of school through the winter months, to either sickness or laziness on the part of his parent (IE; me) is an award-worthy achievement indeed.

Well done son.

Little League : Phillies T-Ball Opening Day

The Phillies on Flickr

Last weekend saw The Sprite have his first game as a member of The Phillies Little league T-Ball team. This was after the mornings opening ceremony which had every team take the field to present their banners and colors. It was all very exciting, and new to me. Being a Brit, this whole organised youth sport thing is taken far more seriously on this side of the pond.

Anyhow, the kids looked great in their bright red uniforms, and they played remarkably well for a bunch of 5-6 year olds who had only 4 practices so far as a team. The other team definitely had the better of the hitting, but luckily at this stage no-one keeps score and the kids are not really paying attention to who is doing better. We have this one kid on our team who is a real gamer, you can tell he's been practicing for this day for years. He's the only kid who can hit the ball clear over the pitchers head past the second baseman. And he has an arm. He can fire that ball from third base like a rocket.

They're all just out there having fun. Until the attention starts to waver after about 3 innings. They only play for 5 innings in T-Ball and that is clearly enough for these little guys. We have 20 games in the season, 2 per week. Gonna be a lot of fun.

The K2's on Flickr

Opening Day Ceremony on Flickr

First Hit on Flickr

Home run jog on Flickr

The battle of wits on Flickr

Technorati Tags:
fitness, kids, baseball, little league

Kindergarten Jog-a-thon 2011

Last week The Sprite and his Kindergarten class of 2011 had the annual Jog-a-thon. They had to run laps around the school field for 30 minutes. This was to raise sponsorship for the schools PE dept. as each runner was sponsored by the lap. It was pretty good fun and the kids really got into it. Our jogtastic little runner managed 16 laps. Not bad considering the mornings cloud cover broke and it was close to 80° at 11am when the kids were running.

At the start line on Flickr

Grinin like a madman on Flickr

Putting everyting into it on Flickr

All sweaty now on Flickr

The finish line on Flickr

Technorati Tags:
kids, kindergarten, school, fitness, fundraising, jogathon

iPrincipal : My Thoughts on Technology in Elementary School

A few weeks ago I received a request from the local school district to fill out an online survey that was focused on the use of technology in our elementary schools. This followed an event at my son's elementary school that was an opportunity for parents to see how the school planned to make use of modern technologies in it's educational curriculum.

Elementary Learners Using iPads

Image courtesy of Fancy Jantzi on Flickr.

The evenings presentations were orchestrated by Ted Lai, the Director of Technology and Media Services for Fullerton School District, who had been guiding several programs that had children as young as Kindergarten and First Grade creating media as part of their education. Of course, this appealed to me immensely. As a media creator myself I totally appreciate the value storytelling has in society, and am very excited kids are getting a chance to discover this for themselves. The fact that they are getting hands on with visual media and the technology used to create it at an early age feels like a bold step forward. It makes me feel grateful to be a part of this community that is enabling this program. I really hope these ideas go somewhere, as the plans outlined sounded a lot like the kind of education I would like my kid to enjoy.

The evening was used as part of a fundraiser to provide for technology purchases for the school, and gave parents and kids together a chance to sample some of the tools the school and Ted Lai are aiming to use. We tried iPad's loaded with apps to engage the kids in Math, Animation, Storytelling. Even Angry Birds was demonstrated for its benefit to understanding geometric angles. Then we moved into the lab where the kids were building PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. The presentations were used to display information learned about trees and plants. The aim is for the kids to learn as they play, that they absorb the information almost without them knowing it.

Naturally, after the evenings series of presentations I was wildly excited about my sons future at the school and the opportunities he'll have to use creative visual communication as part of his everyday schooling. It set my mind thinking about all the cool things the school could do. And then, the invitation to offer my thoughts on the subject fell into my email inbox. I was asked, if I were Principal, what technology choices would I make. My suggestions I have copied below. It will be interesting to see if any are adopted and what else the school district comes up with. I worry though that educational funding being what it is during this financial malaise if good plans and intentions will come to nought if there is no budget.

If I were Principal my suggestions are these. Start a school blog, to open up bi-directional communication between faculty, parents and students. Each class or classroom will have one or two designated 'student journalists' that will have access to login credentials for that week. They are free and encouraged to post pictures, texts, videos, reports about issues they are concerned with, school or otherwise.

An open comment system will foster a healthy debate and free thinking community. Each child will have an ID that is linked to them throughout school that they will login to the system with. If any child is reported or caught posting inappropriate or inflammatory or trolling, they will be dealt with the same way discipline is carried out in the offline world; detention, suspension or expulsion. Good digital citizenry can be learned here.

The blog would be the hub for an open and transparent communication platform.

As Principal I would make my weekly address, via live streaming video, and archived for on-demand consumption. Special events would be covered here, again via live streaming, video archiving, journalistic reports, moderated by parent/teacher team and executed by students. Once a month a live stream video Q&A session would be conducted by me, The Principal, with any parent or student interested.

The survey:

http://www.speakup4schools.org/speakup2010/Default.aspx

Technorati Tags:
media, school, technology, education

The Tale of Brocolli : The Storytellers Journey Continues

A few weeks ago I wrote about the tendency for The Sprite to concoct elaborate scenarios in his game play, and his emerging talent of using his creative imagination for storytelling.

This tendency has continued to blossom, and the expanded scope of some of his recent storyplay has been really fun to listen too. I'd like to share one such event, it was so imaginative and spontaneous and brilliant.

On a recent trip to Laguna Lake, where we often go to take an evening stroll, The Sprite created a new character that had us wondering if our son had taken a bump to the noggin. There is a small bridge that spans a small shallow stream that flows over some rocks and stones. The stream connects the main lake to the series of small ponds that are an integral part of the water filtration system. At that bridge it is pretty routine for us to stop and play Pooh Sticks for a while, The Sprite using some of the many twigs fallen from the plentiful tree's surrounding the lake.

On this day, he found a spray of branches full of leaves that had fallen to the ground. Immediately he picked it up and named her Broccoli. Apparently this was taken as some kind of familial offspring and he felt some paternal need to protect her and nurture her. He played with her for almost an hour, showing Broccoli the different areas of the lake, and talking to the leafy twigs like they were a real person. Everything else outside of this imaginary world was completely invisible to him.

Well, needless to say, we had to give Broccoli a ride back to the house where she was promptly given a place of pride in his bedroom. And there she has sat for the past dozen or so weeks, referred to and greeted occasionally as The Sprite goes about his business.

Our leafy friend Broccoli

"Hey Broccoli, are you okay here...Good. Seeya later"

Predictably, Broccoli has a limited life-span, being separated from her parent trunk and limb many days ago. As the leaves have dried and fallen to the floor, it was apparent we had to put Broccoli out to pasture. Very maturely, The Sprite explained how we should take Broccoli back to the lake so she could be with her family. We could find another Broccoli and bring her home with us.

So that's where we'll be going this afternoon. To give our guest and friend a leafy funeral.

Who knows what's next.

100 Word Celebration

The Sprite had a little celebration for passing his 100 Word reading test today. Mommy recognised this achievement with a CONGRATULATIONS balloon and a delicious huge chocolate cupcake.

Over the past few weeks he has been tested on several lists of ten words each. List ten makes a hundred, which is the guideline for kindergartners to be reading. But there is no stopping. The lists continue to come home and we continue to learn more sight words - words that are instantly recognisable and dont need to be sounded out

Technorati Tags:
kids, kindergarten, school, reading

100 Days of Kindergarten

Today marks the 100th day The Sprite has been in school. To comemorate this epic acheivement the teachers had them prepare a 100 Day presentation for the class. The kids had to collect 100 Things and do a show and tell in front of their classmates. Our little petrol-head predictably chose cars as his 100 Things and ElectricMommy printed out 95 cool NASCARs and HotWheels cars from the internet and The Sprite cut and glued them to a sheet of poster board. We then added 5 real HotWheels cars to the board for effect.Of course, being the designer, I could not let the poster board go simply decorated with printed out cars. I added a yellow and white racing stripe motif to the flourescent orange board, and added a 100 racing number for good measure.

We then prepped The Sprite on what to say for his presentation, and here he is running through it, trying to remember his words and not get nervous. Well, I managed to stay and watch all the kids do their presentations today and it was very cute. They were all entertaining and had some great 100 Things collections. The Sprite of course had to wait to last, to check out what everyone else was going to do. A leader he is not. But he remembered all his key points and spoke up well.

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv), MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Windows Media (.wmv)

Tags: cars, kids, kindergarten, hotwheels, nascar, lamborghini, school, presentation, 100days