Chalk and Cheese Chronicles

Activion & Bill Nye: Science Fun for the Our Family

I think it was the quicksand that did it.

We introduced our 4 "AND A HALF!!!" year-old boys to Bill Nye the Science Guy via You Tube exactly two hours before we were to meet him in person. My boys are intrigued by science so from the moment they first watched Bill Nye talk about quicksand, they were sucked in and they loved it.

So at the invitation of the eco-friendly folks at Activion, we joined fellow SV Moms bloggers and their families at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation (we like to call it the Orange museum!) to see our new friend Bill teach us some science. My boys dressed the part, donning their safety goggles and clutching plastic test tubes. Then they practiced working "Bill Nye the Science Guy" into everything they said, mostly because they liked the way his name rhymes.

When we entered, the room all set up with rows of chairs and I had but one thought: We are doomed. For some reason, I'd had it in my head that this was going to be more of a hands-on demo, with centers like in preschool. Would my rambunctious little boys be willing to sit through this?

But once Bill Nye began to speak, my boys snapped to attention, then rushed to the front of the room to join the other kids on the floor for an up close view of science in action. It worked. It was like Science 101 for preschoolers. I stayed on the side, auditing. We watched as Bill in his signature lab coat and bow tie launched into a demo of the Activeion, breaking down the science behind it in simple terms. I glanced back at my science oriented husband who'd stayed seated toward the back and I could tell he was enjoying this event. But Bill sealed the deal with the pint sized future scientists when he brought out the big drum (really, a big rubber garbage can) and banged out huge rings of smoke which hurled across the room like cannon balls. My little guys were thrilled!

How Do You Tell Them Apart?

Hop on over to Mad About Multiples and let us know what works for you!

Safari West: Best for Older Kids

This past weekend, we joined our good friends Donn and Nora and their 4-year-old twin boys for a 20 hour visit to the Sonoma Serengeti, better known as Safari West. We'd been planning this trip (about a 2.5 hour drive from Silicon Valley) for about a year, initially deciding upon an October stay until a rainstorm panicked us into pushing out our reservation to the warmer month of May. Can you imagine four boys sloshing about a muddy campsite? Can you imagine said muddy boys then holed up in a cold tent, muddy feet jumping atop plush bedding? Neither could we.

It was quite a bit more expensive to push out our reservation. It was several hundred recession dollars more expensive to do so.

Still, we thought pushing out the reservation by 6 months would not only give us a warmer climate but also, give our 4 boys ample time to mature into well behaved 4-year-olds. Turns out, we'd exchanged a rain storm for a heat wave. Temperatures rose above 100 degrees last weekend and I very nearly succumbed to heat stroke. We didn't exactly get the well behaved 4-year-old boys we'd hoped for either. But I blame that one on the spray bottles of water distributed by Safari West to their hot and sweaty guests. And the bunk beds. 4-year-old boys and bunk beds = monkey time!

Book Club Read: 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny

I gave my boys' preschool teacher the book, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny, as a gift for the holidays. Although taking charge of a bunch of preschoolers at first seems vastly different from a class of third graders, it's really not. Teacher moments happen every day, at every grade level, at every school. Author Philip Done devotes a chapter (an essay)  to "Garage Sales" in which he describes how a little browsing about a garage sale can quickly escalate into a heated competition over a game of Chutes and Ladders the moment another teacher arrives on the scene. Fortunately for Mr. Done, he hasn't bumped into our Ms. R, preschool teacher and garage saler extraordinaire. You should see the garage sale finds which fill her classroom! Last week, the kids played happily with a big red wooden barn, a garage sale treasure, of course. Ms. R would give Mr. Done a run for his garage sale money, for sure. So I gave Ms. R a copy of 32 Third Graders (and no, I didn't find it at a garage sale) and she loved it through and through.

I, too, had laughed my way through the book. I read it via the eyes of my former third grade self. I read it via the perspective of a mom to future third graders. I read it as a wannabe teacher and I read it as someone who just enjoys a good laugh. What a fun read! I wanted to turn back the clocks and have Mr. Done be my third grade teacher. I wanted to race ahead and pre-register my 4-year-olds for Mr. Done's third grade class. I wanted to clear my schedule and head to teacher school. I wanted to laugh.

Doing the Happy Dance in Crocs

Enjoy this little video made by 4-year-old Chalk Boy whose chubby hand can be seen in the first few frames. My boys are wearing their beloved Crocs while the other shoes belong to our good friends from preschool Benny and Andrew, who are brothers. I love the video's perspective! Music by They Might Be Giants.

When Obama Speaks, a 4-year-old Listens

Ok, so while his brother was busy making Playdoh cookies (on a stick), Chalk Boy listened and watched about 10 minutes of yesterday evening's State of the Union Address. I think he really was listening. When Obama speaks, even a 4-year-old listens. (This is an audio clip which takes about 4 secs to load.)

Original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.

Photo credit Babyjidesign

Kindergarten (Un)Readiness

When I was 5 years old, my mother enrolled me in kindergarten at our neighborhood school. I'm sure she didn't poll her friends to see if they'd be enrolling their age eligible kids in kindergarten because for the most part, she already knew. Most of her friends were also enrolling their children in kindergarten at their neighborhood public school. If we were age eligible, we went. It's just how it was done back then, at least in our middle class California neighborhood. Sure, a few went the private school route and a few more enlightened parents held their autumn birthday children (especially boys) back a year; but in doing so, they didn't conduct a massive search to find the "perfect" kinder prep program in the frenzied manner we do today. In fact, the children I know who sat out that first year, did most of the sitting out at home, playing with their siblings. Had I been born an October baby, I'm quite certain my parents would have enrolled me in kindergarten nonetheless and off to kindergarten I might have marched, a shy 4-year-old who might not have been quite ready.

LeapFrog Fails at Customer Service

 Oh, LeapFrog. You impressed me when you talked about the research that goes into the creation of your products. Solid products, solidly researched.

Then I got my hands on a Didj. You kindly gave me one; the other, I purchased from your on-line store. My preschoolers quickly became hooked on the simple Jet Pack Heroes game, a free download which they easily played at the kindergarten level. The premise of the game is to rack up points by shooting down what my kids called "ghost-es," it's an innocuous little game with a few educational components built in for good measure. We loved it. It was a perfect first electronic game, especially for long car rides.

But then I tried to spend the Bitz (points earned). I think my boys had somehow earned 150 Bitz which I learned we could spend on customizing their screens via the LeapFrog site. For Jet Pack Heroes, this meant we could use our earned Bitz to buy screen moods (chill, nightfall, strawberry) and keys which open secret rooms. I also spent about 20 minutes on the Didjerator and created 10 Didji characters for the screen hero. My kids loved the new customized looks of the Jet Pack Heroes game. All worked well for about a week.

Then everything disappeared in a poof. The custom moods and the characters - gone. Of course, my kids noticed right away. So off I went to sync up our units yet again. I spent about an hour spending Bitz on custom features (it was slow going) and thought I'd done everything correctly but when I turned on our Didjis after syncing, there was nothing there. I checked our account and the amount of Bitz in our account read a big fat zero, as if the Bitz economy were directly tied to the woes of the real economy. I went through the process again and again. But nothing I did on the LeapFrog site came through. I would have been fine with it, but my children refused to play the game without being able to select from different characters and micromods.

My boys put down their Didjis and refused to play without the added screen bling.

I emailed customer service, but eventually only received an automated reply telling me to check the product FAQs. I called customer service three times and they were absolutely useless. Calling LeapFrog's customer service (an overseas call center) was akin to throwing the user manual at a random person and having them leaf through it in an attempt to help me. Last May, I'd also tried calling them but kept getting voicemail even though I'd called within stated operating hours. I even lurked on the LeapFrog forums but saw no real solutions there. So, their customer service was horrible then and it's horrible now.

Oh and the Learning Path site is a maze to navigate. First, it welcomes me by name but then asks me to log in. I feel like I'm always logging and re-logging in - it's never clear whether the system has recognized me, even when I attempt to sync our Didjis. Finding my way around that site is confusing. I never feel like I know where I am or where I'm supposed to go. I think they need to re-design that site from scratch. I have never been able to use the Learning Path site to track my children's progress (not that I care to do so). Not sure why.

I wish our Didj had come pre-installed with Jet Pack Heroes, complete with the ability to customize the screen. But they strove to offer more than that by luring us to the Learning Path and they failed miserably. I want to talk to an informed customer service rep, one who knows the technical aspect of the games; not someone who is reading from the manual for the first time. I want you to email me when software patches are available. And psst, my husband suspects the software creation had been farmed out to contractors who may no longer be involved in the build.

LeapFrog, you really had my admiration up until I encountered technical difficulties. It's at the customer service level that your company fails. Why put so much time and money into the excellent research end of your products when you can't follow through at the customer service end? I really feel like I wasted my money on your product. I don't want to see you fail. You'd pumped up my expectations only to let them down with a thud. I think most of your customers give your products high ratings until they hit a glitch and have to work with LeapFrog customer service.

You have a problem, LeapFrog. It's floating around here and here and of course, here. Oh, and here. And also here. Wow, that was exhausting.

What next, LeapFrog?

Original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.

Elf on the Shelf

Elf on the Shelf here. Just back from a seasonal gig at some crazy Silicon Valley house. I had to monitor two boys, age 4 - twins! The mom picked me up as an impulse buy at her neighborhood toy store. It was a rocky start from the moment she lifted me out of my tidy and quiet little box. She said, "He's so tiny. I thought he'd be bigger."

Hello? I'm an elf, a person of diminutive stature. What was she expecting, a Santa sized elf? Man!

Back at her home, I toppled from the various places she tried to put me. I wanted to scream, Try the shelf! I'm Elf on the Shelf, remember? That first night, I ended up at the top of the Christmas tree from which the view was great except that my eyes are permanently glancing to the right. I need to look like I'm studying the children and not the boring ceiling. Fortunately, it was night time when I first met the children and nobody noticed my wayward gaze. They stared up at me as if I were real. One of them snapped my picture.

The following day, the mom moved me to the top of a heavy picture frame. Again, I had a great view but my eyes were fixated on the window. It hardly gives me credibility with children if I can't make eye contact with them. I made a mental note to stop by Santa's workshop and ask for some posable eyes. Wonder if that would creep the children out if I could follow them with my eyes?

One of the boys stood on tiptoe to get a better look at me. Then he insulted me by asking if I were "just a toy." While I was reeling from that remark, the other boy hurled another one by asking why I didn't have feet or shoes. (Actually, I hadn't noticed and now it does bother me a little.) The mom didn't even bother to make up a story. Do you know what she did? She agreed. She told her son he was right and that it was strange that I didn't have feet. Then she told her Twitter friends about me, the shoeless elf, and a friend wisely replied that elves don't need shoes because they fly! It's obvious my household did not read my book or they would have remembered I fly to the North Pole while the children are sleeping to report on good and bad behavior. I don't need shoes to fly, now do I?

I then spent the next few nights moving all about the house. The mom insisted upon placing me out of reach even though children know that if they touch me, I lose my magic. She even tried placing me atop the vanity mirror in the bathroom but couldn't get me to stay still and moved me out of there, thank God. There was one night when I worried I wouldn't be moved at all until the mom suddenly remembered and jumped out of bed to find me a new spot at 3 in the morning.

A couple of times, I was day dreaming when I heard my name being screamed. The mom was a little upset, "The Elf saw that! He'll tell Santa and you'll get no presents!" Wow - someone was really having naughty behavior that day and I almost didn't catch it.

Sometimes the mother couldn't get the story straight and said, "Santa is watching." Well, that's sort of true. He's watching, but only with the help of the elf minions who work down in the trenches. Without us, Santa wouldn't know a thing. He'd give presents to the naughty and coal to the nice if it weren't for us.

There was one day when the boys were being particularly naughty and I started to feel sorry for the mother. She tries with them, she really does but sometimes those boys are just out of control. I noticed that the mom says things in desperation, trying to evoke good behavior. I almost laughed when she told her kids that not only was I watching, but so, too, were Santa, Santa's cameras, the Grinch, the Gruffalo (who the heck is he?) and someone called karma. As if we all work as a team - yeah, right. I've never even met the Grinch.

I was kept busy writing down names on my list. Both boys leaped from the naughty column to the nice column and back again. On days when the boys were cranky from hunger or fatigue, my presence would only result in a temporary reform in their behavior. Sometimes, the boys would look up at me, consider their actions and go right back to doing what it was they weren't supposed to be doing. Other times, especially in the freshness of morning, the boys would immediately halt the offending behavior and apologize with sincerity.

The best part of the day was always in the morning when the children would wake up and come looking for me. I almost giggled out loud from my perch next to the children's beds when they ran out of the room without noticing me. I would play hide-n-go seek all day if I could.

I hitched a ride back to the North Pole with Santa when he came to bring presents to the boys I'd been monitoring. While I'd love to boast that my presence greatly improved behavior, I'll admit that I only helped things out some of the time. Then why did Santa come? Well, I actually grew to love the little boys in my temporary home and so I, um, cheated. I used a pencil when making my lists and let's just say I did a bit of erasing while on the job. Every child deserves presents.

Original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles. Akemi intends to go to Michaels to pick up some little shoes and some stick on googly eyes for the elf when he returns before Christmas next year.

8 Missed Calls Can't Be Good

I'm at Hobees, catching up with some friends (one who had some great news to share!) when I reach into my bag for my cell phone to check the time (I don't have a watch) and see I've missed 8 calls.

"Uh-oh, " I murmur, "This can't be good."

I go through the calls quickly. The first is from my boys' preschool teacher. Instantly, I assume one or both of my boys has gone on a hitting rampage at recess. But it's not that (whew), it's my Cheese Boy and he's been hurt. It's noisy at Hobees and I find it hard to change pace from the lightness of laughter with friends to the alarmed voices which spark through my phone. 

He fell from a slide...

His arm is hurting...

He vomited...

I call the preschool, and then my husband and tell them that I'm on my way. I'm not terribly concerned at this point for my boys take tumbles all the time but I prudently dial the pediatrician to see if I can get Cheese Boy in. I'm told they can't see us until 3pm and I say I'll take the slot. I bid adieu to my friends then drive through annoyingly heavy pre-lunchtime traffic toward Cheese Boy's preschool.

The drive seems to take forever.

When I finally reach the preschool, Cheese Boy is in his Dad's arms looking washed out and expressionless. The preschool director and a concerned mom of a classmate tell me he's lethargic and seems to be a little more out of it than he was initially. It seems he had hit his head as well. I look at my normally chipper little guy and for the first time, feel alarmed.

"Let's head to the ER, " I tell my husband, as I steer the car into the rush of noontime traffic.

Forever and a day later, we check into the ER. Cheese Boy is better, smiling a bit and responding to all our questions, even reciting his phone number. We are lucky, the ER is not busy. Nurses and technicians pop in and out of our partitioned quarters. Grandma shows up with brand new dinosaur from D&J hobby. Cheese Boy grins. He is clearly relishing all the attention.

A nice female doctor with curly hair enters the room and looks Cheese Boy over. He provides detailed answers to all of her questions. We laugh because we know his injuries probably aren't serious if he can be so engaging. The doctor notices a bit of swelling on Cheese Boy's right arm, near the elbow. He should have an xray of that arm, she tells us, and also one of his head because of the vomiting.

Cheese Boy is excited to be getting an xray. He wants to see his bones! He's beyond pleased when he discovers he gets to travel to his xray via a wheelchair! Daddy goes with him. I send Grandma home and then leave to retrieve my other little guy (Chalk Boy) from preschool. Juggle, juggle.

At preschool, Chalk Boy is disappointed to see me. If I hadn't shown up, he'd have gone to the home of a schoolmate for a play date. I lure him back to our car and interrogate him because no adults had witnessed the fall. Chalk Boy immediately says that a boy from the other class had pushed Cheese Boy over the slide. "Really?" I say, "Are you sure it was that kid?" The kid in question doesn't seem nearly as physical as my boys, so I'm surprised.

I drop Chalk Boy off with my parents and zoom back to the hospital to rejoin Cheese Boy, his new dino and his dad. He is clutching spiderman stickers, a gift from the hospital. Cheese Boy has been discharged, with orders to watch him carefully and administer Tylenol as needed. He is ravenous and devours the snacks I've brought.

In the car, I question Cheese Boy. "What happened? How did you fall?" His story corroborates that of his brother's. He'd been climbing UP the slide when a kid from the other class pushed him over. He names the boy and the names match. The boy is someone whose name they rarely mention so I know they are telling the truth.

Still, I'm wise enough to know not to judge. Having been the mom to two active boys for 4 years, I know that tables could have easily been turned. On another day, my boys could have been the one to send a kid tumbling over the sides of that slide. Oh how I know it.

After the incident later that day, the preschool explained the playground rules to all of the students. Hopefully, it won't happen again.

I can't wait to see the ER bill. Maybe I won't be so forgiving if we get stuck paying a sizable amount of money. But seeing my boys happy and healthy is, of course, priceless.

Original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles. Akemi also blogs at SV Moms Blog and Mad About Multiples.