Monster has a project that they are working on at school that is all about themselves and their families. He loves doing this. Honestly, I'm not sure what draws him to this other than the fact that he's doing computer work like Mommy and Daddy, but it's great for him. He's currently creating a Power Point Autobiography presentation. I admit, watching him hunt and peck at the keyboard is a painful process for me. I have this desire to take over and do the typing for him so he can get through it faster. I'm pretty proud of my kid because he won't let me. When I offered he replied, "Mommy, I have to do this for myself." Got it, Kiddo. I'm backing off. To make this project just a little cooler, they are using Google Drive. For those of you unfamiliar with Drive, it's just like Microsoft office, but everything is stored in the cloud and not on your hard drive. What's good about this? You can work on documents from anywhere other than just one computer. What also makes it cool is you can share documents with people and people can add comments. Last night, Monster was working on his project when his teacher got on and chatted with him. She gave him pointers for his assignment and encouraged him to keep up the good work. How awesome is that?! And, Monster was able to respond to her, which he loved. This brief, super cool, live interaction made him want to do more. He was inspired to work on this project before, but this made him more excited to get it done so he could share his progress with his teacher. Yesterday, he worked on this project almost the entire day. He's got one slide left to go and he's done completely. His teacher left comments and gave him pointers throughout the day. Everytime he was on and she logged on, he got super excited to see if she would leave him a message. I'm so proud of how hard he worked on this!
Another reason I'm glad I didn't "unplug" was because of a great reading website that Monster's school uses. It's called Raz Kids. You listen to and read stories and then answer comprehension questions. Monster listened to the stories with Sunshine and would then take the quizzes after, so it was sort of like a two for one deal with kid entertainment!
The last "plugged in" thing the kids did was Wii Sports. Sunshine loves Frisbee Dog. She's got this uncanny ability to score super high every time! Monster's favorite is Sword Play. Both of these games teach hand-eye coordination. Really, they do. Sunshine and Monster both had a blast. Sunshine learned that she really likes the "practice" round in Sword Play. They spent an hour laughing and just enjoying being with each other.
We did more than that for two days, of course. We played some great games of UNO, Candyland, and War. We read books and built castles. We baked. I cleaned and even organized the play room (which used to be the computer room until toys took over).
I also took some time with Instagram. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure it out, but it was fun playing around with photos.
We didn't get everything on my list checked off. That's the nice things about snow days, we don't have to really DO anything and we can just go where the day takes us. That being said, I am glad the kids have school today. As much as I can do here education wise, they get more by someone else teaching them the same things. I'm so fortunate that I am able to enjoy these days off with my kids and that they are such great friends that they can enjoy the time together.