May 26 - Filmmaking, Day Four

I wanted to try a little more experimentation with putting music into Vines, and Lyric wanted to film something with his Duplo Batmobile. I tried to set something to the Dead Milkmen's Bitchin' Camaro, but it was DRM-managed! Rodney Anonymous, I promise, it was going to be done with love, strictly pro-bono. So I had to go with Plan B.

I think tomorrow we'll do a little more work on our 360 film THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND. It's way past the date I thought I would get it out, but I guess I'm teaching the kids that there is a long and arduous months-long process that goes on after you shoot something, so [PATS OWN BACK] good job, me.

May 25 - Filmmaking, Day Three

Lyric wanted to make a quick Vine about a hide and seek championship, and seeing as last time we did that morning activity I found my documenting it to be unsatisfactory, I was excited to make that a reality. Here's what we came up with.   

I wanted to do more but then Lyric overturned his drawers and made a giant mess in his room, and I had to cancel filmmaking to schedule an emergency Mystery Elves clean up session.  

I have to remind myself there was a point in my life when dumping lots of stuff out on the floor and making a giant mess sounded like a great idea.  

That basically took up the rest of the morning.  

May 24 - Filmmaking, Day Two

Another TWO MORE EGGS inspired video this morning, this time based on the video game "behind the scenes" saga eggpo: 

Lyric had his own movie he wanted to do, but we ran out of time. 

May 23 - Filmmaking, day one

We've been doing a lot of 360 filmmaking these past few months (BTW, our 360 film THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND is still coming together, we just need to record a soundtrack for it, possibly this week), but this week we wanted to return to Vine and make some new quick silly movies. 

Zephyr and Lyric especially wanted to make some Vines based on TWO MORE EGGS by Matt Chapman. If you haven't seen these yet, hokum smokes, click on that link and get ready to have your mind blown. It's some of the funniest kids content out today, and we think Chapman is a bona fide genius. He's one half of the Brothers Chaps (of Homestar Runner fame) and a key contributor to PICKLE AND PEANUT, an established Vine favorite for us. And even though some of the jokes hit a little close to home for me, TWO MORE EGGS is right up there with his best stuff.

So Zephyr wanted to do some stuff with Dooble, a confusingly accented foreign character who gets into all sorts of bizarre situations. We made him a hat prop, drew on a strange moustache, and were off to the races.

We also experimented with putting music under Vines...

Hey guys, what about grain?

May 20 - Cardboard Toy Shop

With Mumsie here this morning, the kids were too occupied with her to want to do a morning activity. So they had Mumsie time instead.  

Mumsie plays Spot It with Lyric. She also taught Zephyr how to play Crazy Eights.

I had been busy with a craft project of my own all week (preparing a party based on HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, complete with a glowing Necronomicon and spell cards)  so I gladly sat back and watched. More next week. 

May 19 - Wrestling

Having two boys, you start to wonder as a parent how much physical fighting is unavoidable. I recognize that fighting is going to happen, no matter how much I might encourage them to work with and care for each other. On some level they crave the physical contact with each other, I think. But I figure at least the fighting can be more structured with a distinct end point. And so today I tried to teach them wrestling. 

Mumsie was staying for the weekend, so we converted the couch into a bed for her. This would be our ring.  I wanted to teach them the basics of the actual sport of wrestling, but I also wanted them to have fun, so I figured I needed to teach them a bit about professional wrestling as well. I taught them the basics of what pinning your opponents shoulders for a three count was (which was key, as I hoped this would give them a natural end point to fighting they might do outside the ring), and then I had them do intro walks into the ring to start off the match.

I tried to get them to wear Luchador masks (which we have several of, for whatever reason) but no dice.  They did want to wear capes and regular masks, however, so I think they sort of got it.

Zephyr won pretty handily, although Lyric got in there pretty good once or twice. Zephyr is bigger and three years older, but Lyric is definitely the more pugnacious of the two. I expect this result to begin to shift soon. 

Ding ding ding!

At the end I showed them what a wrestling interview looked like by showing them a clip of Macho Man Randy Savage and Mean Gene Okerlund. Maybe next time we'll try and do our own.  

May 18 - Treasure Hunt

As an experiment this time, I'm going to try and let the pictures do most of the talking for this Action Figure Epic Treasure Hunt.

The kids read clue #1, with figures (as instructed)

Clue #1 led the kids to... the air conditioner!

I had planted Bane at the air conditioner, so they found him there, where we had them battle.

When they had defeated Bane, I gave them a little slip of paper I had in my pocket. This was a twist that surprised them. Here's what it said:

A little rebus to keep their brains sharp

Batman checking the bananas for the next clue

He eventually found the clue under the banana hanger

Clue #3 led the kids to the shoeshine box we use to store the hand-drawn notes my wife puts into their lunchboxes every day. It took them a bit to get it, but they got there on their own.

I tried to get better photos of the fights between Batman, Robin, and the villains, but it was a surprisingly hard shot to get since I had to be controlling the villains as well as photographing everything. They mostly came out looking like this.

Once again, pulled this note out of my pocket for them after Ivy was defeated. I thought this might be more difficult, but Zephyr got this immediately. I suppose its the only flower in the house at the moment.

Reading clue #5

Clue #5 led to the humidifier, after a quick discussion about states of matter and how water vapor in the air is called humidity. It also serves as their night light, hence the "bright" clue.

Lyric got this one, and was generally just really into this treasure hunt all the way through.

Clue #7, which was in the toy shopping cart. It let to a red helmet hanging off of an umbrella stand in the living room.

The kids found the Joker in the red helmet, and I delivered my final pocket note.

This led to a clue I had taped to a red phone on the kitchen counter. I thought it would be hiding in plain sight, but it was too obvious... I had to tell them not to open it when they found it as they were finding clue #3. But now they ran to it right away.

I was pretty happy with this way of using letters to spell out a message. Mildly challenging for Zephyr, but still fun. He figured it out.

Lyric took off for their room like a bolt.

Justice League figures with cool armor! Sweet!

Just one last thing to say: this is kind of an excellent summation ofwhy I'm doing this whole morning activity thing. I can tell that this exactly what they want. Giving them an opportunity to play toys with their Dad while engaging some intellectual curiosity solving puzzles and winning a toy at the end is pretty much making their fantasies into a reality. Isn't that something you want to do for your kids? You have the opportunity to make that happen, it just takes a little planning and effort.

May 17 - Teddy Bear School

Today's class,  Back L to R: Arc, Arctos, Blue robot, Tyrone, Boris. Middle L to R: Fluffington Q. Ursine ("Fluffy"), Robear, Kuma, Perry, Chickens, Ragomorph. Front row: Crocodilus.

For Teddy Bear School today, we finally had a day where a lesson got taught rather than having a discipline matter that needed to be attended to. It was a science lesson! The boys met up before class to coordinate their lessons.

Very seriously discussing how to get through to those Teddy Bears. Real Jaime Escalante stuff.

Zephyr gave the class a quick presentation about how trains run on steam power:

And then Lyric taught the class about bats, and how to make them out of rubber ("Take some black rubber and make a bat with it").

And then it became kind of a lesson about Batman. Not exactly the most scientifically accurate presentation ever, but the students were well behaved, so I'll take it.

May 16 - Mystery Elves

Another day where I didn't really get my act together enough to do a full activity, although I did start cleaning up the kids room on my own... It was actually pretty clean to start with, which was a surprise in itself. I think they cleaned up on their own? No, that can't be right, can it? I was just putting their action figures in the correct boxes.

But we didn't do the obstacle course section, based mainly off my laziness.

I did, however, do some more screening of Brooklyn Bridge Rap, and came up with this prospective album cover:

Now everyone wanna be grrrrrrrimy

Inspiration taken from Onyx's Bacdafucup.

How good was Fredro Starr on The Wire, am I right? RIP Big DS.

May 13 - I goofed

Well, Friday was supposed to be Juice Crew and Breakdancing but it didn't happen. There was some complications - we needed fruit so Chay could make yogurt parfaits for Lyric's class, we had to be in at 8:15a for a (separate) Family Friday event with Lyric's class, I was just super-tired - but it all just boils down to our morning activity not happening. I thought maybe we could do it this weekend but that didn't happen either. My flub rate seems to be about once a month. I'd call that not perfect but respectable. 

But this weekend, Zephyr and I started playing around with Hopscotch, an app that lets you design video games as you teach kids the fundamentals of coding. My early review is HOLY CRAP THIS THING IS INCREDIBLE, Zephyr loves it and we've made something like 7 games already these past few days (pretty fun ones too... Including both a flappy bird and angry birds clone). I'm definitely going to be doing a lot more with coding the next few months, and I'm going to do my darnedest to teach my kids how to code as I learn myself. So expect some coding tutorials interspersed from now on. 

So, y'know, hopefully that makes up for missing a day.  

May 12 - Veggie Challenge

Today's Veggie Challenge was recorded in glorious 360 Video! Check it out below!

You might need to open it in YouTube if you're on a mobile phone for the full effect (go to the "share" arrow at the top right corner and it should give you the option). I know it works on a desktop in Chrome, but possibly not in Firefox? It's new technology, folks.

The winner got a really cool Darkseid toy, but it was close, so second place got 100 veggie points as well. And the kids got to eat a healthy every-color-of-the-rainbow fruit salad! Everybody is a winner in veggie challenge!

May 11 - Karaoke Star Time

Okay, I'll be honest... Karaoke Star Time was kind of a bust today. The kids were very low energy, possibly because I didn't get to hype them up for it last night (date night for my wife and I). We did manage to get a little "Hungry Like The Wolf" in...

Duran Duran Karaoke Star Time on #MorningFunManifesto!

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on May 11, 2016 at 4:50am PDT

BUT. But but but.

Yesterday we DID get a chance to do some filming on our 360 rap video for the Peck Slip Rap Club's "Brooklyn Bridge Rap", and oh man, is it looking awesome. I got a chance to look through the footage today and it is looking FRESH TO DEATH.

A few teaser images:

Daryl rocking the ferry

Ethan bringing the elephant in like BLAOW

Oh SNAP you guys. Jake is so good in this.

Basia kicking it so nice. You can see Zephyr in his "Scoob Lover" role in the back...

Zen dropping the mad knowledge

At one point Jake does this insane dance move? Noiiiiiiiice!

Basia roaring like a dungeon dragon...

Ethan living large

I'm still screening, but I'm VERY happy with what we were able to get. Thanks to the rap club for such a great performance. Stay tuned!

May 10 - Feats of Strength

HYPOTHESIS: Strength training for little kids presents a simple goal they have to try hard to accomplish. 

PROCEDURE: For this month's feats of strength, I brought out an old set of variable weight dumbbells I don't use anymore. The kids were into the idea of playing with a new toy, but I supervised them carefully in lifting the weights. They definitely could get hurt if they dropped them... I recognized this, but I let them do it. At their heaviest the weights were 25 pounds each, and that was enough for Zephyr to be able to lift and press a few times, but just barely. I did get to chant "Feats of Strength! Feats of Strength!" as he lifted the dumbbell.

For Lyric (who was dressing up as a minion, by the by) I was a lot more cautious. I wanted him to get the form first, so he just lifted the 2.5 pound base unit over his head. But I did want to see how much he actually could lift, so I let him try to pick up a 7.5 lb weight.

The kids really got into it, actually. Their form was all wrong, of course, and it's gonna take a few tries to get it to a place where I feel safe having them lift the weights without me hovering over them, but I think they found something fulfilling in the activity.

The look of triumph.

And they were pretty proud when they were able to see some progress.

RESULTS: A tentative success, especially for a first effort.

May 9 - Superhero Adventure

HYPOTHESIS: you can teach cooperative play through running certain scenarios with your kids. 

PROCEDURE: For Superhero adventure this month I was thinking we might have our homemade costumes ready, but the sewing still has to be done. So we just went forward with what we had, and Lyric wanted to be Robin while Zephyr made up the mysterious Mister Y. I wanted to tell Zephyr that Mister E might be a better way to hit that pun, but thought better of it... His using a Y at the end probably signifies some new level of reading understanding, why get in the way of that? 

I constructed 4 "gates" and placed them around my living room.  

Post it notes would've worked too, but tape and paper worked fine.  

The idea here was to give them various gates they'd have to cover as I called them out, and since they wouldn't be able to reach more than one on their own, I could make them work together. It would be kind of like a cooperative game of "ship to shore", where the kids would race to carry out an order but they had to work together. 

Lyric wanted to run a scenario with zombies on balloons, so I indulged him and said I was Brother Blood and I was calling in zombies from dimensional gateways. As I called out two numbers, the boys would indeed direct each other over to the right place. We'd pretend to fight off the zombies for a few seconds, then I would give them another countdaown to get to the right gate. I think 4 gates might have been too few, there were a few times I realized they could just stay at the number they were on rather than leave. Next time I'll try 8 gates. 

RESULTS: the kids did end up working together and seemed to have a great time doing it. I think the format is very promising as a Nuclear Submarine, I'm excited to try building on it.

Superhero Adventure is always popular with Lyric, it's kind of what he wishes he could be doing all the time. In giving him that, I gotta call this a success.