March 10 - Action Figure Epic

Today was supposed to be Action Figure Epic, where I have the kids play out a scenario with action figures, but it was something of a bust. This has happened before, sometimes the morning activities just don't work out, and this time it was because I didn't give myself enough time to prepare a story beforehand. I did try improvising with the kids, but it was hard to keep their attention and to keep them focused on the lessons at hand I would hope to impart through this activity because I was just winging it as we went. In the spirit of radical honesty that I'm trying to get at with this blog, I'll go into it a little more.

They were playing Plants vs. Zombies, and a bunch of stuff was exploding.

The kids were already playing action figures with each other when I got up. They were playing pretty nicely with each other, all told, so I let them continue while I made breakfast and tried to brainstorm what the scenario could be for the morning activity later. But it is HARD to brainstorm in the morning. I'm not at my sharpest, that's for sure. This is why I traditionally suggest brainstorming the night before.

I asked Lyric which action figures he'd like to use for Action Figure Epic, and he brought out these three different sized Bane figures. He said one was the Daddy, one was the older brother, and one was the little brother. I thought that was pretty sweet, watching him model our family dynamics (despite the fact that my wife thinks Bane looks disturbingly like The Gimp from Pulp Fiction), and I think there could have been something there to build a scenario out of. But as we played, it just didn't pull together... Lyric kept on running out of the room and having characters get trapped in his room, and Zephyr was doing his own thing with other action figures, and I just couldn't corral the action.

So, yeah, kind of a bust day. I'll try harder next month on this one.

March 9 - Poetry For Prizes!

It was Poetry For Prizes day today, but Zephyr wasn't really feeling it. That was okay, though, because

a) last time Zephyr learned his part for La Di Da Di but Lyric didn't, and

b) Zephyr got a new comic book on Sunday and has been angling to read it for a few days now.

So I let Zephyr just watch and read and focused in on teaching Lyric how to do the "hypnotize" song in La Di Da Di. He certainly offered a bunch of resistance to it, but I kept dangling how close he was to winning a prize in front of him. "All you need to do is repeat this back to me," I said, "And then you get your prize!" It always managed to bring him back in.

It didn't stop him from flopping around, however. Training your kids like this takes persistence, and being persistent means adapting to whatever it is your kids throw at you. So I let Lyric flop around and got down on the floor with him, but I still dangled the prospect of a toy in front of him if he could just repeat the song to me. I recorded this while he was lying on the floor:

Lyric tries to get the second song section from La Di Da Di by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. Sorry for the portrait orientation! It was supposed to be in landscape!

Incidentally, I know I'm not the first person to ask for this, but can't we get an option on iPhones to "always shoot video in landscape format"? It would be so easy to do!

Anyway, We got it to a point where Lyric had the song pretty much down when I prompted him with the start of a few lines. From here it just becomes about repetition. Zephyr, meanwhile, just picked up the song from listening in the background. Here they are doing it together:

Progress was certainly being made, so I gave both kids an action figure for their effort. More to come soon!

March 8 - Teddy Bear School

Ring the bell, because Teddy Bear School is back in session!

Almost entirely bears today! So much for diversity...

When we laid out the bears this morning, Lyric insisted we have a new student, and got out his little Totoro doll to be in the class. I asked Zephyr and Lyric what they do when a new student joins their class, and Zephyr said they play the "name game". When I asked what the name game was, he said they pass a ball around and when it stops, the person that touches it says their name, and everyone has to touch it once. Lyric ran to get a ball, and I just sat back and watched.

Zephyr passed the ball from one bear to the next, chanting "round and around and around it goes, where it stops nobody knows" until it landed on a bear, and then either Zephyr or Lyric would say their name (depending on whose bear it was). They had slightly different voices for each bear.

Totoro was last. After he said his name I asked them if they thought Totoro felt more comfortable in the class now, and Lyric said he did. This is what Teddy Bear School is for, finding out about what really goes on in school through kids acting it out, which is sometimes easier for them to do than to describe it.

Zephyr then said they were going to do a math game, which was notable because he was complaining about learning math a few weeks ago. The game was called "What Hundred", and similar to the name game, it involved passing a smaller ball around and calling on the person the ball stopped on, but this time they had to say numbers that when brought together made up 100 (for example, 50 and 50). I'm not sure how much of their school day actually revolves around "hot potato"-esque games, but apparently it's more than I thought.

Zephyr took a few bears, but when it was Lyric's turn (or rather, Lyric's bear Arc), he said "One and zero". I think this was actually pretty accurate for where he's at in Pre-K number theory... understanding that you write 100 with a one and two zeroes. I told Arc he was factually correct in that you needed a one and zero to write 100, and then I asked Zephyr to tell Arc what you'd actually have to add to zero to get 100. Zephyr was able to see that it was 100, and made a show of teaching it to Arc. This was, as you might expect, pretty cute.

Things started to go towards the silly when they asked Bat Bear to say something that could make a hundred and Lyric had him say "Black and yellow and brown". Lyric thought that was the height of wit. I know Zephyr is working on a money study in school, so I had him work out how many quarters go into a dollar (after making sure he knew a dollar was 100 cents), so that he could get that four 25's go into 100. It's a nice side benefit that Teddy Bear School lets them revisit and reinforce what they've been learning at school, and I fell like I could see it working. But of course the main benefit is that it's just freaking adorable.

March 7 - Juice Crew & Breakdancing

Today was supposed to be an easy game of animal charades, but since we had to skip juice crew for product testing on Friday and we had veggies in the house and I had something I wanted to raise a glass to this morning, I made the command decision that we would juice. And a delicious juice we made!

As I've said previously, I like to make a juice representing six colors of the rainbow. Today we had:

• Red watermelon
• Orange clementines
• Yellow frozen mango and a frozen banana
• Green Pear (and beet greens!)
• Blue blueberries
• Purple beets

The kids enjoyed throwing the pieces of fruit into the juicer, and thought they were pretty sneaky taking pieces of pear and watermelon and eating them before they went into the juice. Little did they know it was all part of the plan to get them to eat more fruit.

The nice thing about juice crew is that you don't waste fruit. Those clementines were about a week old and somewhat unpeelable, but use a knife to cut them into cubes and they juiced just fine. Another thing to make sure of is to use the beet greens. Those things are CRAZY healthy and packed with iron and betaine, and I don't quite know what that means but I know it's good. Using frozen fruit was a sort of experiment that worked pretty well... it made it more of a smoothie.

This juice tasted astoundingly good. The kids used shot glasses and knocked back quite a few.

For the old-school hip-hop music choice, I put on a mix of classic Nice and Smooth joints. "Early to Rise" is especially appropriate in the morning for my kids. For our Breakdancing portion, I showed Zephyr and Lyric a youtube video of Mr. Wave from the New York Breaker crew:

Uploaded by tamjeedreza on 2010-09-27.

With that example in mid, I had Zephyr try and give me an "electro wave". He returned with light up glasses and did this:

Pretty good! I'm seeing improvement, and I think the instinct to use the light up glasses was very "Rapture". He's a cool customer, that one.

In the end, we all clinked glasses and toasted, because...

IMPORTANT

ANNOUCEMENT!

Today I officially released the video for the song "Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth"! It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here! If you've somehow missed it so far, get ready for it:

And also check out this 360 video version of Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth starring Zephyr and Lyric!

This was the thing they helped me with that I was rewarding them for way back when, by the by. Mystery solved!

March 4 - Product testing

Today's normally scheduled activity of Juice Crew and Breakdancing was pre-empted for another round of product testing, but unlike last time our morning activity was turned into a focus group, we had several products to test today for Mommy. It was kind of a relief as our juicing materials were not quite where they should be, honestly (For those wanting to see some hardcore juicing action, may I recommend last month's offering).

Today we had four products to test:

Clockwise from Top Left: Wood Rocker, Magnetic Artist Finger Puppets and Plush Dolls, what I believe are called Tazoo magnetic blocks (?) , and Evolg Three finger mittens.

First there was the iPhone powered air guitar "the Wood Rocker", then a set of artist-based finger puppets and plush dollls, then a set of strange magnetic blocks from Switzerland, and finally a set of three fingered touch-screen-compatible mittens from Japan. The kids went first for the magnetic blocks.

On the positive side, the kids seemed to figure out the way to put the blocks together pretty easily... which seemed a little complex to me, as you had to build a spherical core out of square and triangle wedges stuck to a metal ball. I'm still kind of unclear WHY you had to make the spherical core, as the rest of the construction seemed to be about attaching things to the outside of the core. It just seemed to me like more pieces and parts that could get lost, but there was something satisfying about using magnetism to make the core. The kids did get a little frustrated trying to put together the bird on the front of the package, but they eventually got somewhere close to where they needed to be and it certainly occupied them for a while.

The finger puppets didn't thrill them as much. I was able to make a quick vine for Chay based on an incident from the life of Pablo Picasso, in which he painted a portrait for Gertrude Stein:

In 1905, Picasso asked her to sit for a portrait, and the results (not Cubist, but representational) were dark, brooding, and strange. Picasso famously said, “Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will," which was quoted by Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

-poets.org

We didn't have a Gertrude Stein finger puppet, so we used a Frida Kahlo finger puppet as a stand in.

So that was fun, but then we didn't really know what else to do with the finger puppets.

Then we broke out the Wooden Rocker guitar. For this you download an app onto an iPhone, strap it to the guitar, and then use it to strum out music. You can apparently tilt the neck to give it different harmonics, but that didn't work all the time. What was interesting here was seeing the different ways Zephyr and Lyric played with the guitar. Zephyr was more reserved, trying to figure out how to make something musical.

But Lyric... man, Lyric just wanted to turn around and rock out. How perfect does he look with a guitar, man? He had the attitude down!

I mean, he wasn't making music or anything, but that doesn't seem to be what the Wood Rocker is about. It's just about looking fresh and practicing your Eddie Van Halen moves. Maybe some more experimentation will bring us some more expertise with it, but I'll settle for just looking cool.

We didn't get a chance to try out the mittens before school, but we tried them at night and they worked fine, if perhaps looking a little odd.

So final scores: Wood Rocker B+, Magnetic Artist Finger Puppets B-, Tazoo blocks C, Evolg Mittens B. Tough but fair.

March 3 - Veggie Challenge

Today Zephyr wanted to help me write the blog entry, so this will be co-authored by him.

ZEPHYR: Today was veggie challenge. But Dad, again, forgot to get stuff. So we had a silly orange contest.

ROBERT: This is true. But they were actually clementines.  I tried to keep it a secret as long as I could, but Lyric smelled it out (and I think he also peeked).

ZEPHYR: He definitely also peeked. CLEMENTINE CHALLENGE! With five exclamation points.

ZEPHYR: Why didn't you put five exclamation points there?

ROBERT: I'm not doing that. Anyway, the rules for today's veggie challenge was that we would have three rounds to see who could eat their clementine in the silliest way. Zephyr, being the oldest, started.

ROBERT: Zephyr, tell us a little about what you were going for here.

ZEPHYR: SILLY!

ROBERT: Yes. Kind of a Cosbyesque thing going on here with an eye roll as he ate the first piece of clementine. But then it was Lyric's turn.

ZEPHYR: He decided to eat his clementine with no hands.

ROBERT: Like an animal. It was kind of a surprise, too, I didn't snap a photo of his head at the plate in time. But I got the above photo of him inhaling the clementine slice. He saw an opening and he went at it! Point: Lyric. On to round two!

ROBERT: Talk to me a little about your technique here. Eating a clementine with your elbow! Very impressively silly.

ZEPHYR: I ate a clementine with my elbow and I don't regret it.

ROBERT: Okay! Where did you get the idea for that?

ZEPHYR: Same kind of thing as the clementine challenge, NOWHERE!

ROBERT: Strong words from a strong contender. But then it was Lyric's turn!

ROBERT: And I don't know what Lyric was doing here. Something with his hands in front of his face. Very confusing.

ZEPHYR: Confusing to me too!

ROBERT: Point to Zephyr! And just like that, it was all tied up. Time for your final round.

ROBERT: This one had a wind up and then a silly ending. Take me through it.

ZEPHYR: It started with grabbing a clementine with one finger and putting that finger in the air, and then another and putting that finger in the air.

ROBERT: And you were chanting "bo bo bo bo bo".

ZEPHYR: Don't say that! I was chanting "La da da ya da".

ROBERT: I do not remember it that way. But then you pulled the classic "Vampire Fang" maneuver. Talk to me about that.

ZEPHYR: La di da di, we like to party. This is the silly part of the blog.

ROBERT: Very silly. But then it was Lyric's turn. He'd need to pull out the big guns here.

ZEPHYR: He did a clementine smile!

ROBERT: Understated but effective. Just look at that face he makes at the end - a classic mug. I had to call it a tie. We went to overtime! And this is where you shined!

ROBERT: I thought you were doing clementine lips, but you told me different.

ZEPHYR: Could I say what it is? It was a clementine moustache and beard.

ROBERT: Yes it was.

ZEPHYR: Lyric tried to pull out the big guns, but instead he pulled out the big hands! AH HA HA HA HA!

ROBERT: Yup, a lot of action going on behind those hands. I gave the final round to you, winning today's Veggie Challenge.

ZEPHYR: But Lyric got a toy.

ROBERT: He did, because he got 150 veggie points for going into overtime. He had 300 from last time, and the rule is you get to trade 350 Veggie points for a toy.  You got 200 veggie points for winning and now have 305.

ZEPHYR: Pretty close to a new toy!

ROBERT: That's right! Meanwhile, Lyric has 100 veggie points and a brand spanking new Kilowog action figure. And you both got some vitamin C from fresh fruit this morning. Another win win from the Veggie Challenge!

ZEPHYR: I'm going to stop now, okay?

ROBERT: That's fine, we're done for today.

Zephyr with his very "hunt and peck" typing style.

March 2 - Karaoke Dance Party

Okay, I've been excited about writing this post, because I think this might be THE parenting innovation of 2016. This is about to change the game right here. Two words: YouTube Karaoke.

Here was my problem: I don't know how to play an instrument. I've tried to pick them up at various points in my life, but nothing has ever really clicked. I love to sing and I love to make music, but my ability to do so has always been limited. This was especially galling to me when I tried to sing bedtime songs to my kids, and I couldn't adequately get out my favorite tunes without converting them into acapella numbers. What I needed was a background track behind me that I could sing to. And then one day in 2014 I had the idea of searching YouTube on my iPhone to find karaoke songs.

Holy crap. There are thousands upon thousands of karaoke tracks available on YouTube. The selection is a little weird sometimes, some of the selections don't have lyrics that scroll with the song (so you just have to know the words yourself), and quality of the instrumentation can vary, but man oh man, the selections are DEEP. I have a playlist that has 10 songs by the Smiths/Morrissey on it... I'm lucky if I find one Smiths song at a standard karaoke joint! AND THEY ARE SO MUCH FUN TO SING.

So I've been singing karaoke to my kids at bedtime for the past year and a half, and they've picked up some favorites along the way. So for morning activity today, I turned the tables on them and had them sing me some of their favorite tracks.

We set up on the kitchen table after breakfast. Zephyr was torn between David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and an Elvis tune, but he eventually decided on Elvis' "Marie's the name (of his latest flame)".

Zephyr does "Marie's the name of his latest flame" in the style of Elvis Presley. Well, kind of in his own style, actually.

Since Zephyr can read, I think he was a little early on a few lines just out of standard Karaoke panicking. I needed to prod him a little to keep the tune and timing, and keep up the volume. But I was really proud of him for stepping up, and I think the King would have been into it. And seeing his brother do it made Lyric really want to do it himself.

Lyric wasn't at all conflicted about which song he wanted to do.

Lyric does "Moonage Daydream" by David Bowie. And he nails it. No, he can't read yet, he just knows the words because it's his favorite bedtime song.

He kinda nailed it, right? I love that dude's "singing my heart out" face.

March 1 - Cardboard Toy Shop

It's March 1st! I consider it the REAL on-the-down-low New Year's Day. I'm with Romulus on this one, January and February don't really count... they're just the months between calendar years. This way September is the seventh month, October is the eighth month, November is the ninth month, and December is the tenth month, like it literally is supposed to be.  But point being, it's a new month, a new calendar, and a new schedule of morning activities.

Today was supposed to be Cardboard Toy Shop to use all the cardboard I had left over from last week, but my wife couldn't take it around the house and recycled the cardboard sheets. Fair enough! One of the joys of Cardboard Toy Shop is that cardboard boxes are almost always abundant.

Since we made Zephyr's suggestion last week, I let Lyric pick the project this week, and he wanted a big robot he could ride in. After some sourcing in our compactor room, I found some boxes and we were ready to go.

The boxes were pretty small, but fortunately enough Zephyr and Lyric are pretty small too. I figured we could make the bottom box big enough for Zephyr or Lyric to crawl around in, and build the body of the robot on top of that. The first step was to tape up and reinforce the side flaps of the big box to make them larger and open on the bottom:

Then I stacked the boxes on top of each other, growing gradually smaller "like a square snowman", in Lyric's words. I got a gold paper cup for a neck and cut a hole in the top of the smallest box to have it attach as the head, making for a robot about the same size as the kids.

From L to R: Zephyr, Zippy Mark 2, Lyric.

With the basic shape set, I began coating Zippy with aluminum foil to give it that shiny robotic look. The kids took some sharpies to start decorating the robot (which they named Zippy Mark 2 after our original Cardboard Toy Shop robot from a few months ago), and Zephyr designed a face:

Lyric tried putting a piece of pepperoni on the face, because he is very silly. That's why there's grease marks on the face. I let Lyric do his own face for Zippy on the back of his head too.

From here there was some trial and error, experimenting with how we could make the robot move. The initial plan of crawling didn't work, as the kids would straighten up and make the robot topple. I cut out some eye holes (more like an eye square), but it didn't help. And then I had an idea: we could use the wheeled storage bins I got at Ikea as a base and put the robot on top.

With a little coordination, we were ready to have Zippy Mark 2 make his first steps. Zephyr was the pilot and Lyric was the motor for this run:

Zippy Mark 2 on the march! Check the retractable arm!

Beep boop, y'all.

February 29 - Feats of Strength!

This morning the actual activity didn't happen until late because I was playing superheroes with the kids. They had put on masks and had power bracelets over their arms, and Zephyr was trying to plasma blast me while Lyric (as Stripe Boy) was trying to put me in a set of toy handcuffs. Writing that sentence makes me so happy. I love the idea that I was able to play with my kids. That's what I want this blog to be about, teaching parents how to play with their kids.

Here was the situation: I was a powerful villain (the Juggernaut) and I would chase them, carrying their clothes for the day, threatening to take off their pajamas and dress them for real. And they ran around the house and screamed a lot. Like, a whole lot (Zephyr especially). I left my wrists open for Lyric to cuff me, but he got too scared a bunch of times and ran away. But eventually he got me and cuffed me to a chair. He was pretty proud of himself for doing that. I felt good that I gave him that moment of figuring something out.

In the spirit of radical honesty (ITSORH): I messed up. What I should have done was pivoted the playing to teach Zephyr and Lyric how to play together. Next time I'm going to try and be present enough in those moments to be able to push the situation towards something where they each need to activate some sort of a power with each other... a "nuclear submarine".

But anyway, Feats of Strength! This is where I challenge Zephyr and Lyric to lift something heavy and chant "Feats of Strength! Feats of Strength!" as they do it. Today we were trying: a stack of books!

You had to pick them all up from the bottom, stand up with them, and balance them. Zephyr dropped the books once, but got it the second time.

Lyric (still wearing his Stripe Boy mask) wanted to make it even heavier. I let him think I added some books. Mind you, as he's doing this I'm chanting "Feats of Strength! Feats of Strength!"

What I hope this gives them: a sense of confidence in their own strength,  a situation in which they have to try harder, gross motor control.

February 27 - March Schedule time!

The weekend before the following month is the best time to get out the following month's schedule, so there's no disruption in the activities. Not to say I've always hit that deadline, however. But now, to get just a bit meta for a moment, having a blog is giving me more of an impetus not to blow self-imposed deadlines. So here's next month's schedule:

Some old favorites (like Piano Lessons for Dad and Chess Puzzles) return this month, plus some brand new experimental activities we'll be trying out for the first time, like a Karaoke Dance Party and Easter Egg Design. Stay tuned!

February 26 - Cardboard Toy Shop

Today our morning activity was Cardboard Toy Shop, in which we take a piece of cardboard we were going to throw away and make it into something to play with. I like it because it teaches kids to recycle, gives them an outlet for getting creative, and you get to make a neat toy for (essentially) free. Also, I love working with cardboard and duct tape, whether it be for Halloween costumes or actual promos...  It's sturdy enough to hold together, but disposable enough not to be upset when it doesn't hold together. Ideal for crafting with kids.

So first comes the sourcing. This was easy, as we had just gotten a soap.com order of paper towels and tissues. But I also found a discarded box of coat hangers in the recycling bin for good measure.

And then I brought out the tools we'd be using: duct tape, packing tape, toilet paper rolls, sharpies, and our pair of extra heavy scissors, which cut through cardboard like it was nothing.

Not pictured: the packing tape and the sharpies. Sorry fellas, too early. You da real MVPs.

Then I broke down the boxes with the scissors to get some flat sheets of cardboard to work with. As I was doing so, I talked with the kids about what we could make.

Lyric wanted to make a cave for Robin (we had made a Batcave previously, replete with giant penny and toy dinosaur) and Zephyr wanted to make a Gargantuar robot from Plants Vs. Zombies. In an effort to save floor space, I decided we should go with the robot. Zephyr went to the iPad to find a reference image.

Our reference image. Zephyr is nuts for Plants Vs. Zombies.

I started crafting the torso and legs and cut some strips of cardboard for the kids to make the telephone pole arms. I had the kids put the crossbars on the telephone poles with packing tape.

Then I cut out a thicker strip of cardboard and folded it into five, so I could make a 4 sided square shape (with one side overlapping). This was going to be our head. I planned to get a cheap "plastic bubble toy" to make the Imp cockpit, which could be housed inside the face square. We drew on the eyes and the mouth and Lyric noted that the head was silver, so Zephyr took a silver sharpie and started coloring in the head.

Zephyr is very careful and precise when he colors things in.

To be honest, that's about as far as we got before it was time to go to school. We'll keep working on it over the weekend, I think. But I dig how it's coming out.

"Braaaaaaaaaaaaains! Robo-braaaaaaaaains!"

More as this story develops.

Update, February 27th 8:52p: Well, we worked on it on Saturday and I got a capsule toy for the head bubble, and this was the finished product:

Pretty darn happy with this one.

February 25 - Superhero Adventure

One of the main goals I have with morning activities is teaching my kids how to work together. I try to make fun games based around cooperative play for them: I call these games "nuclear submarine games" based on those movies where people in nuclear submarines need two people to simultaneously turn keys (at locks far away enough from each other so that no one person could turn both keys) to launch their weapons. The idea here is to realize that there are some tasks one can only conquer by working together.

That's the main thrust behind today's morning activity, Superhero Adventure. I get up in there and play superheroes with the kids and subtly (or not so subtly) try to give them challenges they have to overcome by working together.

Often times we play existing heroes from the Justice League (because my boys are kind of snobs about DC over Marvel... just like their old man). But this time I had it be made-up superheroes, to give them a little more imaginative freedom. We went to our costume box for props.

Zephyr was Dr. Ice, with ice making powers. He said he also had icicles in his hair, and that he hadn't combed his hair since Christmas, and he wouldn't tell me which year that Christmas was in.

Lyric was Stripe Boy, with control over stripey rays. It came out during play that he can also make stripe portals to other dimensions.

The helmet almost fit. Almost.

And I was The Colossus, a huge beast on a rampage. With my shield I could block Dr. Ice's Ice attacks, and with my sword I could cut through Stripe Boy's rays. I made sure to telegraph that the power was in the shield and the sword, pushing the kids to realize that if they worked together, Lyric could take out my shield and Zephyr could take out my sword.

The aim was to cause conflict (i.e., ineffective powers) and tie it to a solvable problem. I gave the kids a bit of time to try and come up with the solution on their own, but when they couldn't quite get it, I abandoned subtlety and switched voices to a more narrator type voice breaking down the solution ("But that's when Dr. Ice noticed he could use his ice powers on the sword of the Colossus to help Stripe Boy!") Fortunately, subtlety and superhero comics are frequently not a traditional pair (with many beloved exceptions that prove the rule), so giving clues felt very within the genre.

The kids had a great time with it. Superhero adventure is always one of their favorites. It's also one of the most challenging morning activities I do... playing with kids on their level is VERY HARD as an adult. I didn't think it would be before I had kids, but it's odd how being self-critical can throw everything off when you're trying to play like a kid does. I didn't prep for this superhero adventure like I sometimes do; that does tend to make things easier because you can steer the course of play in a particular direction you're prepared for. But you can be effective playing with your kids and winging it, and they will be glad you did.

Action shot of Dr. Ice and Stripe Boy!

February 24 - Sweet Ninja Moves

Man oh man did the kids wake up silly this morning. When asked to put on his underwear, Lyric put it on no less than three silly ways:

And Zephyr decided he would "prank" me by making today's morning activity, Sweet Ninja Moves, look like it said "Stupid Ninja Moves".

I didn't mention it actually says "Stuped Ninja Moves". Prank: returned.

But despite the modifier, it was time for Sweet Ninja Moves. This was an activity designed by Lyric based on something Robin said during an episode of Teen Titans Go, and holy moley, if you've ever heard a 3 year old say "check out my sweet ninja moves", you know what cute is. Lyric designed it as a way to just jump around and pretend that he was fighting bad guys, but I took it and added some more structure to it.  The idea is I try to teach them some element of martial arts. It should be noted that although I received many years of martial arts training as an elementary school lad, I am in no way a qualified instructor of martial arts. Fortunately, at this point in development for the kids, the instruction can be so basic that I'm pretty sure I'm giving about as accurate martial arts training as the most advanced sensei.

Today's lesson was about punching. I let them stand shoulder width apart, had them point their shoulders forward, and showed them how to do a karate punch: one arm out, elbow straight; one arm back, elbow bent, and then switch arm positions.

The point of this was to give them a bit of physical education, and for them to realize that there's a lot of stuff they can focus on in their body to achieve good technique. I wasn't the most enthusiastic student of karate when my parents forced me to take it as a kid, but I still completely remember the promotion I went for when I was 13 in karate and how focused I was that day, and I don't think I've ever been more focused in my whole life. That alone makes me think there's some value in teaching your kids this stuff.

I also taught them the foundations of the "Kiai", the short scream that you do at the end of a set when doing Karate, which was just a pretty fun thing to teach. And with that, I got out some construction paper so that we could break boards! Zephyr filmed this session with Lyric:

I tried to get Lyric to take a video of Zephyr breaking a board, but he kept on covering the camera with his fingers. We'll get there eventually.

February 23 - Mystery Elves Obstacle Course

Today I made the questionable decision of letting the boys take out their Legos before heading off for school. By the time I got dressed, here's what their room looked like:

Ugh. The "before" picture.

A pretty big mess, and one that if I didn't handle right away, would see lego pieces spread far and wide across their room. Fortunately, today's activity was Mystery Elves Obstacle Course, in which the kids pick up stuff while running a simple obstacle course (picking up things becomes just another obstacle, like jumping over or crawling under something).

Mystery Elves was the very first morning activity we ever did, way back in September of 2014. The house was a mess with toys and clothes everywhere, and in a moment of desperation wondering how to get the kids to help me clean it up, I got the idea to phrase the ask in the form of a game we could play together. I made the kids wear pointy elf hats, talked in an elf voice, and gave them orders on how we could clean up the house while Mommy was still getting ready for work. The idea was to surprise Mommy as she was about to leave for work, and when she asked who cleaned the house, say that elves did it. The kids loved it. They actually wanted to play again the next day, and that's when I got the idea to do more varied morning activities.

However, Mystery Elves is not one of the most popular activities these days. The kids have somewhat caught on to the fact I'm making them work. I've tied running the Treasure Hunt (their favorite activity) to being contingent on doing Mystery Elves at some point in the month before, but that doesn't make ordering your kids to clean up any less of a drag. So last month I tried linking it with running an obstacle course, and the kids seemed to dig it a bit more.

So that's what we were going to try this morning. First I picked up as many Legos as I could in the blanket for Lego playing I laid out and put the filled blanket into the Lego bin like so:

Major credit to my wife Chay here for the "Lego blanket" technique.

Then I moved the Lego bin to by the door and called the kids over to start the obstacle course. The obstacle course usually involves running around one thing, over another thing, and under yet another thing. This morning I had them go into Lyric's bed, around the bunk bed ladder, and over the green elephant step.

But then they have to go and pick up an item left on the floor and bring it back as quick as they could to the bin. As they run the obstacle course more and more times, I give them more and more things to carry, and pretty soon we usually run out of things littering the floor. Two birds, one stone.

However, it's usually bigger things on the floor... clothes, figures, stuffed animals, etc. We hadn't tried this with Legos before. It did not work smoothly.

They're counting out 10 Legos each here. That turns out to not be a lot of Legos.

The kids got more obsessed with getting the right number of Legos than cleaning up the floor. Now, I can see the value in reinforcing counting skills for Lyric, but that wouldn't solve the more immediate problem of a messy floor. So we needed a change in protocol.

I switched up the rules of the obstacle course so that after running through the active part, the kids would get on their knees, push the Legos with their hands like bulldozers, and try to sweep the floor clean that way. It was a little more successful.

The good news is that they started working together, with one kid being the bulldozer and pushing Lego pieces to the bin, and the other kid being a crane and lifting the pieces off the floor into the bin (and then they switched jobs). Teaching the kids how to work together is a HUGE reason I do these morning activities with them, so that did my heart good. But they weren't the most efficient bulldozers, and there were loads of pieces they left behind. As they went off to brush their teeth with Mommy I finished up the job.

The "After" picture.

I wish I could tell you I got to this point having my kids do all the cleaning, but in the spirit of radical honesty which I want to do this blog by, I cannot. But I did get to teach my kids a few little lessons, have a bit of fun with them, and get them to help clean their room. Good enough, I say.