Parenting: Moving on to Kindergarten

This month was marked by another major milestone: Kindergarten, the point where the education system starts in earnest and where the effort of the school becomes comparable or exceeds the effort of the parents. In our case, the big issue here was T's birthday: his birthday is after the PA deadline. We wanted him to start Kindergarten because his cohort in daycare/preschool was all starting Kindergarten this year, so socially and academically he was ready.  (daycare/preschool promoted people based on age, so he already had almost a year of pre-K. And he maxed out on the pre-K assessment even before being promoted from the 3-year old preschool to pre-K (meaning they ran out of pre-K assessment material, they knew not to bother with the 3-year old assessment material)). The public school pathway would require that at some point, he would have to repeat a year, which seemed like a recipe for boredom.

For the two weeks before pre-K, we have been moving his bedtime and wake up time up.  From a generally 9:30 in-bed time we shifted to 8:30.  From a generally 8AM wakeup over the summer we shifted him to 7.  The week of pre-K we had him in bed by 8:30, and 6:30 wake up.  Sunday was the school welcome and orientation.  Monday I woke him up in the morning to get to school to play in their playground.  Wednesday was first day of school.  Yeah!

First day of Kindergarten

Main development for the past month:

We had a nearby neighbor from China that we got to know over the summer, which included two young girls. T and them played nearly daily as we were essentially the only people they knew who were not business related (and the only people for the kids to play with).  They eventually did so many things with us that we joked that they were copying our lives.

Playing on the Northshore Riverwalk Water Steps

T had another round of testing, so now he has a Yellow belt with Black Strip (in the ATA system, the Yellow belt is the third belt, after White and Orange).

Yellow belt testing - Knife hand strike

T has definitely been getting more confident and expressive over the summer.  He is better about  expressing what he wants and being forceful (i.e. taking his turn).  And he is better about expressing when he has an opinion, which will hopefully help when in school.  (Taekwondo definitely contributes here)

A has turned into a 15 month old babbling daredevil.  She is a determined child when she has determined what she wants, and is willing to climb over anything to get to it. Very amusing are her babbling episodes, where she can go on babbling for extended periods of time. When she develops language skills she is going to talk our ears off.

Looking forward we see settling into his new school and getting to know his place in the class.  We also have a first TKD tournament that T will go to in September, which is a new level of performing in public

LEGO Chain Reactions: LEGO for teaching engineering and reading

Lego Chain Reactions: Design and Build Amazing Moving Machines by Pat Murphy and the Scientists of Klutz Labs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very different LEGO product, it is about using LEGO system and Technic pieces to build simple machines, so it as much learning about simple machines as it is about building. And the fact that the end result is not a static object but a series of motions is a big plus in our book.

The LEGO Chain reaction set is a book with 10 plans for building a structure that supports a combination of simple machines. The assumption is that you have the LEGO system pieces (the standard bricks and plates) and it provides you with a few Technic pieces (beams and pins). For each project, there is an introduction to the project, instructions to build the project, instructions on how to work the project once it is done, and an explanation of how it works. What links the 10 projects together is use of either moving pieces or plastic balls that go in motion and becomes the trigger for the next project.

My four year old son and I have gone through all 10 projects. And we have done sequences of up to four of the projects in a row. In making the projects, we actually ran out of bricks and had to do substitutions and use Duplo blocks to get enough volume to build up the structures. With every project, I have him read the text on the project, then have him explain to an audience (mommy and any lucky visitors) what the project(s) are doing.

The fact that the projects are so different, and that after making them, they are very playable is the appeal of this. My son enjoys making the completed projects work, and especially making the chain, then trying to explain what it all means.

In the end, my assessment is that this is a great use of LEGO, build things that then have actual use, and use it to engage and educate the builder. It combines engineering and language (explaining why the projects work the way they do). And abstract enough that the builders may be able to apply these designs in new ways. Highly recommended

Explaining how a four stages chain reaction project works

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Parenting Month 57: The preschool years are ending

This summer is going by quickly. And in front of us we see that next month T starts Kindergarten, which is probably the point where others start to have a significant impact on his growth. (While his daycare and preschool staff are wonderful caregivers, we are clearly driving T's attitudes towards how he approaches his world as well as skills he develops, academic, social, and physical.)  Some touchpoints.

1.  He has learned to take pride in competency and the effort it took him to get there. This shows in reading, playing piano, taekwondo, building things (LEGO and wood), helping with cooking and chores around the house, and most facets of life.

2.  While we are reserving judgment on how smart he is (ok, we are pushing him into Kindergarten ahead of schedule, but that as much a result of the fact that preschools advance kids on their birthdays while the public school system advances people in cohorts as anything else (i.e. he has been in pre-K this past year since his birthday, but the standard public school timeline would have him repeating a year before he is on their timeline)), he does have an attention span and a pretty good level of perseverance (for a 4-year old). And we think the fact that he has the attitude that it is good to work hard to do something difficult as he starts his school years is a success on our end.

3.  We have had guests with us this week. One of their comments was he seems like he is the type of kid who will never complain about things being unfair because he did not get something. We are pretty sure that he has learned to value people over things (although, if the things in question are books, it is a close call), And I think that half of the attraction of usual rewards like candy, toys, and trophies is because he gets from others that he is supposed to like it. (we occasionally have candy laying out, and don't realize there is an issue until other kids come into the house, because T won't go after them)

4.  He likes helping around the house. Actually, when he makes a mess, he tries to clean up before we find out about it. It is really funny when he needs some supplies to do it. Last week he was asking me to help him get paper towels, "but don't come downstairs to look at the table"

5.  He approaches the world engaged and looking around. We see that in his visits to museums, when we go on walks in parks and trails, and especially in taekwondo (my impression that this is the biggest differentiater among the pre-schoolers is their ability to focus on the teachers and class.
6.  He is generally happy. The main testimonials are a couple kids that are in both his pre-school and his taekwondo school who have stated that "T is always happy"

7.  He plays with other kids.  This was a bit of a concern up to when he was around 3 1/2 or so.  One thing that helps is there are a number of kids just a little older than him on our street (mostly girls). Now, the preschool teachers say that our little turtle is out of his shell and they have to tell him to stop talking.  One of the joys about taking him to taekwondo is that we get to watch him interact with the other kids. And while we don't encourage it, he interacts with all of the other kids as they are waiting their turns for drills and such. As one of the smallest kids in the school (I think he is now the second smallest, one of the owners refers to him as one of their peanuts),  We don't ever see him being one of the really talkative kids in his class and we expect that he will always take time to get used to new adults (neither he nor his sister were ever pass around kids),

8.  He is learning how to present what he knows. Since we actually talk about what is going on at the museum or science center, we have been having him show the other kids and parents (advantage of having academics as parents, we actually know more than the kids volunteering there about whatever we are looking at, most of the time).  These past few months he has been getting markably better at it.

9.  He adores his little sister. (and she does likewise).  From day 1 he has enjoyed being the big brother and getting to play and help care for his baby sister.

10.  He still does not sleep on his own. Back when he was a baby with colic, the pediatrician warned us that he probably would not sleep on his own until he was four. Well, he is four, what's up (jk)  At this point he can sleep by himself and does occasionally, but he really likes to check every now and then that someone is around. And he likes the snuggle.  And, well, since I can pretty much sleep through the occasional check-in it does not bother me so why not. And I'm sure that there will be an end to this.

11.  He is very careful. In some sense this is good. There are a lot of things we never had to worry about. He tested things before trying to eat them, We never really needed baby gates with him (because he figured out how to go backwards down before he started getting to fast for us to catch him), we can let him cut food with a (plastic) knife.  We probably did not do a complete job on babyproofing things. But this goes along with not being daring in trying new things, until we go through with him first.

12.  Not very creative. This somewhat goes with being careful, but he never had the phase of coloring and drawing with abandon. So we went from scribbling to deliberate outlining shapes, but not the randomish stick drawings that are stereotypical of pre-schoolers.  I've started him on learning to draw using primitives (assembling basic shapes until they look like something) but the wild abandon that many kids keep through early elementary school never took with him.

13.  He is no longer the the island of stillness in the chaos of toddler daycare like when he was 3, but he still tends to focus on one thing for extended periods of time, even as all of his peers fly from task to task.

14.  He is becoming more expressive.  With people he knows, he is willing to express himself.

15.  In Fate Approaches terms, he would be Good at Careful, Fair at Quick and Clever, Average at Forceful and Flashy, and Poor at Sneaky.

16.  We pretty much skipped tantrums. He has occasional crying spells, but his tantrums seem like he is trying to imitate what he thinks a tantrum should look like.

17.  He has little sense of possessiveness.  His daycare teachers have commented he does not fight over toys, because he does not have that sense of possessiveness and greed. He has more of a sense that something is his, but it still is not that strong.

18.  He is pretty much what you see is what you get. No deceptiveness at all. Well, he is in the stage of saying what he thinks we want to hear (which would be considered lying if he were older), but even that is not that bad (exhibit: saying "I need a paper towel. But don't come downstairs, there is no mess")

Now we are getting ready for Kindergarten.  We are going to a local catholic school, because they are the only ones who would consider taking in someone early (with recommendations from his pre-K teachers and an assessment, of course).  They are going to get a kid who reads Dr. Seuss before entry into Kindergarten. Judging by their reactions, they can handle a wide range in a Kindergarten class.  We have found out in his daycare/pre-school that T responds well in settings with small sizes (also helped a lot in taekwondo) and we are looking forward to his starting school.

Lessons in teaching: teaching exploratory data analysis with R

Last spring, I took over a course labeled as information systems engineering.  This is aimed at sophomores in engineering.  Historically, this course focused on using the MS Access database.  I was asked by the department to take this over after several years of commenting that our engineering seniors have inadequate computer programming skills, as evidenced by the amount of effort they spend on their senior projects doing tasks that would have been much simpler if they tried programming.  Last year some of the faculty tried experiments in their classes where they had students code in an assignment (generally they asked for C). In every case this went very badly.  So they asked me to take this course and change it so that it covered programming and specifically to use R. (I am effectively the primary data analysis faculty here).  In keeping with the course title, I chose to focus the course on data analysis, with one month focusing on databases and how to think about data problems (and giving them time to gradually learn R), the rest on exploratory data analysis.  I used as the primary text Data Manipulation with R by Phil Spector, and as supplements GGplot2 by Hadley Whickam and An Introduction to Data Cleaning by Edwin de Jonge and Mark Van Der Roo. I presented the CONVO framework for thinking about data problems based on Thinking about Data by Max Shrum.

As freshmen, they would have has CS0 (the Association for Computing Machinery designation of introduction to computer science for non-computer science/electrical engineering majors) material covered over a two course sequence that also covers mathematics for engineering (primarily linear algebra).  The language of instruction is primarily Matlab, but they also cover C and, depending on instructor, Python (there is one module that is sometimes covered by Physics faculty, and they like to use Python).  For databases, there is another course on databases taught by an adjunct faculty who used to teach databases for information systems.

For tools I used SQLite (more on why this and not MS Access later), SQLite Manager, R, and R Studio. Prior to the end of the previous semester I sent everyone an email with links to videos introducing them to R and R Studio and encouraged them to introduce them to R through typing out a tutorial (I explained that they would actually learn R over the semester, the typing exercise was to ensure they had seen everything once before we actually needed it in class.).

For assessments, there were weekly labs for computer knowledge, exams mostly covered how to think through data problems. A semester project with two milestones (plus completed project) was the main way to assess how well they developed computer programming competency.  Each week, we covered one

We had three datasets that I used as teaching and lab examples throughout the course.

1. Titanic survivors
2. National Survey of Family Growth
3. American Community Survey (U.S. Census, Pittsburgh North PUMA)

Some observations and notes

1.  SQLite vs MS Access.  I was surprised to find out that MS Access has a relatively low size limit on databases. It was not able to handle either the National Survey of Family Growth (expected) nor could it handle a single PUMA for the American Community Survey (this was a surprise).  That meant we had to use SQLite for the entire course. (my Mac students were happy since this put them on equal footing with the PC students). Next time I will just use SQLite. (and use MS Access only to explain why we are not using MS Access)

2.  Learning R.  In a pre-class survey, the entire class indicated complete lack of confidence in programming to fulfil a task (expected).  I think that the standard programming language belief that it is always easier to learn a second programming language failed in this case, because I did not realize just how bad their first experience was.  While the first month was very intentionally a confidence building exercise, I think that for a portion of the class, they really needed to start from scratch.  Next time around, I will spend an entire period doing nothing but walking the class through R.

3.  Data manipulation.  This included covering data structures (text, dates, dataframes), regular expressions, plyr, reshape, and missing values imputation.  Essentially the Hadleyverse v. 1.  One issue here was the wide variety of potential topics. While I think every topic got used by someone in their semester project, some of the student evaluations complained about my teaching topics that were not on the exam.  Essentially, for people who are only used to computing on numbers, the entire topic of data manipulation seems to be a heavy cognitive load.

4.  Visualization.  I taught qplot, but I think that I should have gone straight to ggplot.  I think that either I go the traditional route and build every type of plot as an individual entity, or I present the grammar of graphics approach and build plots. Either way, now that I've taught it, I don't think qplot helps in either, and it is a lot less capable. (every groups final project pretty much had to transition to ggplot)

5.  Projects. I let  the students find their own datasets and questions, subject to the fact that they had to write the project purpose using the guidelines we covered in thinking about data.  The big division in quality of the projects was the richness of the dataset.  Next time, I will be a lot more strict on the dataset, in particular, I had a subjective guideline that they should not consider it practical to look at the whole dataset. In some cases, this still was a very small volume, and it made for a trivial and uninteresting report.

6.  Thinking about data. I used Max Strum Thinking about data framework where for a data project, one should identify the COntext, Need, Vision, Outcome.  Every week we read a contemporary news article that included a data component (mostly from the fivethirtyeight.com website)  Each discussion opened up with class discussion to summarize the article into this CONVO framework, then a discussion of the analysis in the article itself.  This actually worked out pretty well.  Each exam had at least one CONVO focused question, and generally they did well (and of the people who did not, there were no surprises based on class participation)

7.  News articles.  I had a wide range of news articles that we covered in a weekly discussion, drawn mostly from fivethirtyeight.com, the Upshot column from the New York Times, and the data series from the Washington Post.  Each article was assigned at the end of the week, for discussion in the Tuesday morning lecture.  Discussion opened up with a summary based on the CONVO framework, then we evaluated the data analysis presented in the article, followed by how we could change it to make it better or to answer a different question.  These class periods were fun. My goal was to take 15 minutes for each article, in a few cases we were on a roll so we let it go to 30 minutes.  I had good participation.  And it showed in the CONVO question on exams, and generally people did well when I asked them to imagine a data analysis based on data presented on a test (this was the last part of a multi part question, where the other parts were about the data presented). One disappointing thing was that when it came time for course evaluations, I was rated poorly with how the class material relates to the everyday world (like all engineering courses do). So I have to figure this one out.

8.  Course evaluations. When course evaluations came in, they were roughly a uniform distribution, which makes them very hard to interpret. In addition, comments that expressed weaknesses were mirrored in the comments that expressed strengths. So that meant that I had terrible averages and a chat with my department chair.  Fortunately for me, the generally accepted belief is that the broad diversity in the teaching evaluation is due to pushing the students harder (i.e. making them do programming again) and that this is part of improving the department as a whole. Hopefully when he meets the dean to review the faculty the dean agrees with this assessment as well.

9.  Class projects.  About a quarter of the projects (teams of1, 2, or 3) were genuinely impressive. Many projects with 100,000s of records, a few with millions of records, several dimensions, and data analysis that used layered visualizations to explore.  Most projects were a little more modest, thousands of data points and reasonable visualizations. Some projects were personal in nature (looking at issues in their home towns), others were fun (several projects revolved around music or sports) A number showed evidence of lack of confidence, shown in very unambitious data sets.  The issue with this group is how hard to push. One of the known problems with CS0 or CS1 is that they complete destroy people's confidence in programming, and a substantial portion of those who take one of their courses completely leave the field, or in the case of engineers, avoid programming at all costs in the future.

Next time around:

1.  Using a framework like CONVO (Max Strum) works. I am pretty sure everyone at least learned how to think about problems and settings.
2.  Skip MS Access.  I think I probably spent too much time on databases and working with the MS Access interface.  Next time, going straight to SQL is probably enough, given that the limits on MS Access means that we cannot do interesting datasets.
3.  I liked using three datasets the entire course.  Actually, some of them used the American Community Survey for their semester projects (after reading in multiple PUMA, e.g. an entire metropolitan area instead of only one PUMA).
4.  One question that I will have to think about is how much of a do-over of CS0 this course will be.  Clearly, as it is most of the class seems to get it the second time around and a good portion are pretty impressive. But there is a pretty large fraction that finished CS0 absolutely convinced that programming is forever beyond them.

Data Manipulation with R by Spector: Book Review

Data Manipulation with R by Phil Spector
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The quality that programming language based data analysis environments have that menu driven or batch environments do not is the ability to manipulate data. That means transforming data into usable forms, but it also means cleaning data, manipulating text, transforming data formats, and extracting data from free text. While R falls into this category of data analysis environment, almost all of the available material focuses on the application of statistical methods in R. This fills a much needed niche in how to process data. I still do not regard R as my goto tool for data manipulation, but this book means I am more likely to stay in R than otherwise. I used this as a textbook in a lower division data analysis course and the class went from a group that only half remembers Matlab to being able to process and analyze fairly large datasets. A comment I received was "I looked back on the work done in this project and I cannot believe I actually did that!"

The first part of the book is reading in data and writing out results. It discusses both text (csv, delimited, fixed) and working with relational database. One note is that the database they use is MySQL. This was easily convertible to SQLite, which is what I used in my class because my students are not IT savvy. I also used supplementary material for SQL (which is readily available) Then putting things together into data frames.

Next are a series of data types: datetimes, factors, numbers. For people who have only worked in Excel, these are deal breakers. Even using Excel, these are areas that often go unnoticed by students and lead to problems.

Character manipulation is about working with strings and a gentle introduction to regular expressions. For many of my students, they have never manipulated text programmaticly before, so this chapter was quite successful. For Regular expressions, well it provided a taste of it, enough to solve the lab assignment. I supplemented it with other material, but noone was going to learn regular expressions in 5 pages.

The best part of the book was the sections on aggregating and reshaping data. This is what made what my students were doing with R start to look like magic. Aggregations using the apply family of functions, reshape to convert data into long or wide formats, combining data frames, and an introduction to vectorization. This is not going to make anyone a functional programmer, but these are key idioms and Spector spent a lot of time here.

I am not going to prefer R over Python for working with text and manipulating data, but Data Manipulation with R shows how to do some non-obvious things. The examples are all interesting enough to be useful, and they all work as is. And this goes deep enough into some pretty powerful capabilities that expanded my students understanding of what is possible. While it is becoming dated (an update would have to include dplyr), the approaches it provides put the reader well on their way to being an accomplished R programmer, not just someone who feeds data into functions.

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Parenting month 56: Hosting people in Pittsburgh

Memories from this past month was playing host to people.  The highlight was the visit of the older cousin. The first time that their older cousin came to Pittsburgh was when T was just born, so these visits over the years have been touchpoints on both (now all three) of them maturing.

Cousins reading and laughing (and definitely not settling down before bedtime)

We covered many of our usual activities: playing with LEGO, reading books, going to the Carnegie Science Center and the Museum of Natural History.

Paleontologists at work

There is a box turtle looking at us

P' J was adamant the entire trip that he did not want a younger sister. He is just getting to that age where girls are not fun.

Reading for his younger cousin

Our other opportunity to play host is a chinese family who has moved into the neighborhood for the summer. They have two young girls, so they look for things to do around the city.  And we get to run into them in many of the family destinations.

We met each other at the zoo

Polar bear looking at two juvenile humans through the glass

Diver at Pittsburgh aquarium cleaning the glass

the museum of natural history and the science center. We enjoyed showing them how we maximize our enjoyment of these places.  The other benefit of this is that T has other kids around close to his age who speak Chinese in normal conversation. We have seen the chinese kids in his daycare gradually stop using chinese, even the ones who go to chinese school, and all of the parents think about what to do about that. But having peers having fun in the language may help.

In other news, T achieved his yellow belt (in ATA Taekwondo, yellow is after orange which is after white).

Line sparring while testing for yellow belt

One thing we are gratified by is that the school maintains individual standards, even at this age. They have a sense of what he is capable of, and hold him to it. So things that they may let slide with other 4-year olds, they don't let T get away with.  (and this goes for testing too, I watched them make a group of 4/5 year olds repeat their forms during testing because that group could have done better)  T responds as well. He is still too much in his own world to consider that he is being held to a higher standard.  A funny, a couple of the moms commented to me that they point out T to their kids as an example of focusing during class.

A's milestone for this month is walking. She always gave the impression that she would have preferred to skip the crawling segment and go to walking, now she can walk reasonable reliably (i.e. in the toddler way of wobbling around trying to keep balance.) And she likes to practice following people around. It is very funny when T is trying to get away, and they go around in circles around the house.

Coming up, a couple more lazy months of summer as we look forward to T starting kindergarten in the fall.

Applied Predictive Modeling By Kuhn and Johnson: Book Review

Applied Predictive Modeling by Max Kuhn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I regard this as a more applied counterpart to more methodology oriented resources like Elements of Statistical Learning. So it applies machine learning methods that are found in readily available R libraries. In addition, the author is also the lead on the caret package in R, which provides a consistent interface between a large number of the common machine learning packages.

1. Built around case studies that are woven through the text. For each chapter, the math/stats is developed first, then the computational example is at the end, so that the example can develop data manipulation, application of method, then model evaluation. I like this as it allows for more complex and messy data sets than when using a new, small example for each problem. Also allows for better discussions when illustrating the differences between methods.
2. Data manipulation/data processing is given a separate chapter early on. I appreciate the attention given to working with the data (e.g. missing value imputation). There are other resources in data handling, but not in the same place as those that address the statistics methodology.
3. Emphasis on model evaluation. There is an early chapter devoted to model evaluation. Then each major section of the book has an early chapter devoted to model evaluation of that class of problem. This is in contrast to many books that are built around types of algorithms, and model evaluation is fit in. Methods and algorithms are relatively easy compared to the thought process of determining what is the right thing to do. It figures that this book will be strong in model evaluation when one of the authors is the lead on the caret package in R.

I used this as a supplement in teaching a data science course that I use a range of different resources because I need to cover working with data, model evaluation, and machine learning methods. The next time I teach this course, I will use only this book because it covers all of these aspects of the field.

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There are pirates at Fiddlesticks!

Bippity-Boppity-Boo

Today's Fiddlestick's concert theme was summer vacations, and as we had recently taken one we were all prepped for this concert. So we very much enjoyed having the thread and mini-story of finding a vacation story for Fiddlesticks.  And as my son is getting older, he appreciates more aspects of this. 

Now that my son is old enough to be learning to play piano himself, we are more like the intended audience of the Fiddlesticks concerts.  So what do we want to see.

1.  The experience of hearing a symphony live, in concert, in a venue with the right proportions, which sounds richer and with more layers than anything that can be played on home speakers.

2.  A sense that music can exist in a context and communicates something.
3.  An experience in a place where responding to music is acceptable.

Making a pirate ship

Certainly, the discovery time activities are meant to put the kids at ease. We watched and listened to the contra bassoon and heard a talk and got an autograph from an oboist.  We sang with Katy Williams to Bippity-Boppity-Boo and the Fiddlesticks song. We made a pirate ship and sailed it in the outside fountain. All of this was to make the kids comfortable.

Sailing in the courtyard fountain

The activities in large part are making what is obviously adult space (Heinz Hall) into a place where kids have the freedom to explore, play, and interact with things musical, or even peripherally related to music. So making a pirate ship and sailing it in the fountain is related to a sing-a-long at the piano and watching and listening to symphony musicians playing in the lobby. And by the time they get to the hall, the kids and adults are comfortable with the setting.

In the concert itself, the sense is that music is meant to be responded to. Whether it is Katy, Fawzi, or Fiddlesticks running around on-stage or the symphony playing a piece, unlike a normal PSO concert, there is no need to try to stop a child (or adult for that matter) to express amusement, recognition, joy, or empathy in the moment. When an audience member reacts, we can acknowledge the reaction instead of trying to contain it. and it makes for a different experience (I noted that there were a number of adults in the audience without any obviously attached children, so this may go beyond kids.)

My son enjoyed the experience. I spent the concert watching his expressions change as the pieces developed and listening to his observations. Then the story he told my wife about the concert when we got back. We enjoy having music part of our lives, and want our kids to share the wonder and delight in listening and creating music themselves as they grow up,  And Fiddlesticks is a part of that.

[also at the Pittsburgh Symphony Blog]

Parenting month 55: ability vs. effort

Reading Dr. Seuss for his little sister

In addition to our little Mexican vacation, this month saw A (12 months) becoming much more capable. She is beginning to stand, manipulate objects with her hand, and can communicate her desires.  The last is very important, because it means that the biggest obstacle to toilet training is taken care of, and her being able to communicate her desires removes much of the frustration that leads to tantrums.

T has begun copying his pre-kindergarten classmates more, and unfortunately the group he imitates is going through a baby talk phase. (we (the parents) have been able to trace it back to one girl in particular who is the origin of this).  We are hoping this is something that will pass in short order. In the meantime, we do not hesitate in letting him know we don't like it (generally emphasizing that to do fun stuff with us he has to make sure we know what he is saying!)

As A grows up, we are starting to identify divergence in how A and T developed. By the end of the first year, colic had already passed for T, although this still showed in delayed development.  But by this point T had begun displaying the focus and attention span that was beyond the norm for a toddler.  In contrast, A has the standard 1 year old length of focus (almost none) but she gives the impression of being thoughtful and smart. First, the fact that she is able to effectively communicate relatively specific and complex desires (given the fact that she cannot actually say any words.) She also can multi-task. If she is prevented from doing something, she can shift tasks until her original goal becomes attainable, she then drops what she is doing to get the original goal.  In contrast, T's main characteristic was persistence and focus, which in many cases overcomes lack of raw ability.

Building an ant

We are seeing that this will lead to different sets of challenges. Discipline with T was based on providing an object of focus, then encouraging him as he achieved his object.  A is more like other toddlers, shifts from object to object, but she will either succeed or fail quickly.  T liked to stay with things to completion. A will shift focus once her objective is realized.

All that is in the future.  Our current task, getting T ready for Kindergarten.  Mommy summer school is in full force.  Daddy school is going on outing and playing games :-P

Building The Family Handyman Ridiculously Simple Shop Stool

My latest project was the Ridiculously Simple Shop Stool. The goal of such a thing is to have something that is useful for sitting, a short step ladder, or as a fairly portable work surface. It is not necessarily pretty (hence it is called a 'shop stool' instead of a 'stepstool')

Plans for the Ridiculously Simple Shop Stool from The Family Handyman

Some important characteristics is that it is built from 1X dimensional lumber (so the wood is cheap) and it is all short straight cuts, which is important because I do not have a mitre saw, a table saw, or a router. 

My backyard workshop

First step was to cut the lumber. I got 1X3, 1X4, 1X6, and 1X8 lumber from The Home Depot. They cut each board once (that is there policy) so that I can fit it in my car.  I recently purchased a Rockwell Compact Circular Saw so I now could make straight cuts on 1X or 2X lumber, which was very helpful for this project.  A couple of nice features included the fact that it is small for a circular saw (single hand operation), so I could use it and a carpenters square without clamping.  Also, using bench cookies would stabilize the board by itself (small circular saw means less vibration).

Cut wood for two shop stools

Cutting boards with a Compact Circular Saw and a Carpenters square.

Next step was sanding the boards and staining them. I used a rasp to break the corners, then three rounds with sand paper.  Staining was with Dutch Oil.

Staining boards

For assembly the hard part was the fact that 1X dimensional lumber is prone to splitting. I split my first two, then I noted that the instructions say to pre-drill holes to prevent splitting.  After that it was a lot easier.

The next tricky part was getting the steps in. The side slabs make it hard to get access to the tops of the steps. I think pocket screws would work, if I was up to learning how to do pocket screws.  Another new purchase was a right-angle driver/drill head for my Rigdig Jobmax multi-tool. The advantage is that I can drive in wood screws without as much space as the average cordless screwdriver.

After getting all the supports and steps glued, pre-drilled, and screwed in, we had the structure of the shop stool.

Complete shop stool

Next was to put finishing touches on it.  Scrapped off the excess glue.  Added non-stick safety tape on the steps.  Added hinges so that the second half of the top can be opened to make a stool top or folded to allow for steps. Added felt pads on the feet and on the top to protect the floor and to soften the sound when the top is opened or closed.

Two completed shop stools in the kitchen

A nice little project. It turns out to require use of two new tools (the Rockwell compact circular saw and the Rigdig Jobmax Right Angle driver). It will get multiple uses, as stools my in-laws like to eat at the kitchen counter when they are at our place so they can use two stools.  The steps are tall enough that my 4-yr old son can now help food prep and operate the microwave. The stool tops are good for side tables in our living room (so we can sit at our couches and eat). They also make for good work surfaces in the kitchen (that will always be clear because we need to use them for other reasons).

Very nice project. Thanks to The Family Handyman for providing the plans.

Cancun family vacation

We had a rare pure family vacation (meaning the trip did not include visiting friends, family, or other business). With two kids (preschooler and baby) and two grandparents, we went the easy way out and took a trip to a family-friendly all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico. The benefits of an all-inclusive resort is that very little thinking or planning is required. The knock against these sort of things is that they are completely removed from the host area, which is true. But some memories and thoughts:

Touching the sea for the first time in Cancun, Mexico

1.  Using an all-inclusive resort made it possible to have a vacation while we are caring for two grandparents, and two small children. No worries about getting food, everything is in short walking distance, and we don't have to worry about getting lost in the general traffic of everyday life. And right now, that is important.  Someday, when T and A are older and going to different cities is meaningful, we will have that kind of vacation.

2.  We think that most of the staff are recruited from Quintana Roo>. And a large fraction of the guests were Mexican. So the resort we were at was not a Little America that I thought that these places would be.  We had T do greetings and simple questions in Spanish (e.g. hola, buenos dias, buenos tardes, __ por favor, donde es ___, gracias, de nada, numbers) And staff responded properly to a four year old American using Spanish. For T, who learns Spanish in pre-school, that means that he experienced hearing and using Spanish as a working language, not a memorization exercise that pre-school Spanish is. Bonus, there were a couple of times when S and T were interacting with housekeeping (which were not generally bilingual) and T knew just enough Spanish to get the point across.

3.  We provided the staff great amusement with my high-school Spanish. Sometimes, when the staff recognized me (or T) we would have our entire exchange in Spanish. We noticed this would happen when there was another staff observing in surprise, and the staff we interacted it would give them an amused smile at their surprise. This has the obvious implication that if my not-significantly-different-from-zero Spanish was cause of notice and amusement, the typical level of Spanish for an American is actually zero.

4.  T is still the very cautious and generally shy self. He had a few scary (for a four year old) experiences over the trip. He slipped and got stuck on a bunk bed ladder, he got turned on a water slide and went underwater, and he was on a jetski (being used as a lighter to another boat) punching its way through waves and up on a beach. So we had many conversations on how being brave was doing things that were scary, and not stopping even when things go wrong.

5.  For both T and A, the best part of the trip is clearly the fact that they had mommy and daddy close at hand for large parts of every day.  Frankly, they would have enjoyed this if we stayed at home too. But they also saw us interacting with the hotel staff. And (especially since we were trying to get T to practice his Spanish) doing so with courtesy, even when there were problems with the room and travel. (ok, if you asked T, he probably would say that parasailing and always-available ice cream were pretty significant too.)

6.  A is a very expressive one-year old. That means she babbles, dances, looks at people, and acts and speaks with intent. Very clear and specific intent. In a one-year old, this is seriously cute (and we hope this means we will skip the worst of the tantrum stage). But another part of us thinks that if she is like this now, just wait until she actually has language skills. As I recall, in daycare, there was a clear hierarchy based on who had language skills (they could communicate with each other, and communicate their desires to the teachers). T was on the bottom end of this until he was 3 1/2 or so. A is going to be at the upper end.

7.  T definitely recognized that he has to compete for attention. And it is very hard to compete for attention with an expressive one-year old. Especially when you are naturally an introvert. Knowing a little bit of Spanish helped in this weekend with the staff and the other Mexican guests, a preschooler trying to speak a second language is pretty cute too.

8.  We somehow chose a resort that was also hosting a Korean church conference.That was something you don't experience on the average vacation.

9.  Grandpa and T (and daddy) went parasailing (which involved using a jetski to get to and from the boat).  Grandpa was very happy at this little adventure.

We are glad we did this. Grandparents can probably only do this for a limited number of years, and the kids are not in a position to appreciate anything more complex. When our kids get older, they will better appreciate things that are more complex, more adventurous, or more immersive.  But this is a good start.

Parenting Month 54: Many things to talk about

Homemade wood tangrams

This month's theme for both children has been expressiveness. Both of them have been growing in expressing themselves, which is a far cry from the previously very quiet in public T and a baby A.

T's expressiveness and confidence in public we still attribute to ATA (tae kwon do school).  He enjoys being good at something (which comes with practice), and now having passed two rounds of belt testing and one session of board breaking, he is gaining confidence that he can perform in public. So now in ATA class he cheerfully shouts out answers and ki-yup and yes sir/yes ma'am appropriately.  In preschool he now speaks regularly, which is a considerable change from even 6 months ago when he was very quiet. He still a relative island of stillness in the chaos that is the typical pre-school classroom, but he interacts more with others.

A has also become quite expressive. Last month she babbled and sounded like she was having a conversation.  Now when she babbles she is clearly doing so with intent, and she gets upset if you do not respond appropriately! Among things she can distinguish are toys, DVDs, books, and food.

Will you read this book about going to the potty for me?

In other news, T has had his kindergarten orientation. After testing, and visiting the school for various events over the past two years, he is getting comfortable there. We were bemused to see that T was NOT the shy kid of the group, instead he was a bouncing little pea going along (he is young, and even for his age he is short, but not skinny).  His future teachers have noted that he has a good attention span, made evident during his visits to the classrooms, testing, and when he came to watch the school play (watched the play without the parents having to closely manage him).

A has become mobile. While she still really wants to walk (she cruises and occasionally attempts to stand without support), she does crawl. And she does crawl with intent (a destination in mind). Sometimes that intent may or may not include us, so we have to keep an eye on her (gege has to be tasked with being a watchdog at times).  Among other things, she has figured out how to get up the stairs (she is ok with backing down). Since she has determination, she has made it to the top floor before we've figured out where she was.

Parenting Month 53: When Eagles fly

T's major events for the month were taking a trip and our first experience with high stakes testing.  By all accounts both went quite well. T has always been a good traveler, and the high stakes testing experience was one that was sane.

We need to go that way to get on our plane

This month was noted by mommy taking a work trip to Las Vegas, and we took T out of day care for the week and had him go along. Auntie P also went along, having been to Las Vegas before, but not in the company of a 4-year old. So amid lots of walking in the hotel, through a casino, to other hotels on the strip, we got many comments that he was a good traveler, standing patiently through many lines, and doing his job of pulling his own bag around and staying with mommy (or auntie). The flight itself was spent reading and playing. Even when tired, the worst he got was asking for a carry. It would be hard to expect any better from a pre-schooler. This was another instance where we pulled the 'you need to be a very good boy' on him prior to the trip. Of course, he also knew when the trip was over, so he reverted back to normal (which is still pretty good, but there is a notable difference. Weeks like this are where we want to ask if we can keep this child :-)

The other major event for the month was kindergarten testing. This is known as high-stakes testing in the pre-elementary world, because the test is being used to make choices on admission into a school.  Because T's birthday is in October, he would not be eligible for kindergarten next fall in our school district. Since he started pre-Kindergarten in November, that would imply that he has to repeat a year of something, either he takes Kindergarten next year at our daycare (which does offer Kindergarten) and then goes to Kindergarten again (when he is eligible for Kindergarten) or he repeats pre-K at the day care and goes to Kindergarten when he is eligible.  While there are arrangements to test into pre-K at the local school district, word on the street is that almost no one passes (to get into Kindergarten early, apparently the standard is test at a level of passing the year after the one you want to test into).  In addition, the public school Kindergarten is a half day kindergarten, so you still need to make arrangements for the other half day (which our day care offers).

So we are looking at a nearby Catholic school K-8. It is very highly regarded. In visits to the school we have noted the interaction between the kids and the staff, and also between older and younger kids (the 6-8th graders mentor the K-2 grade students). We like the smaller class sizes (our day care had a pre-K with 20 and a pre-K with 8 students. T responds to the difference).

The issue with high-stakes testing is that pre-school kids do not perform on demand, to having to make decisions with long-term effects based on a one time event, and the parents are fully aware that the kid's behavior is essentially random.

While the general concept of testing is rather insane, the concept of evaluation is not, a school needs to do an evaluation to determine if a child is ready, especially in a case like this where a child is trying to go above grade level (in the U.S. the pattern is to hold children back, so the effect of some parents holding children back and other parents pushing kids ahead is that there can be a 3 year range in ages. Later, the difference almost disappears, but at age 6, a three year range is very significant, so the school needs to know that the younger end of the range can handle it.

Hence, there is a little cottage industry of preparing pre-schoolers for high-stakes testing, especially in places like New York City where the better pre-schools and kindergartens are known and they get full. Because how the child performs in a span over a couple hours does make a long-term difference.

Fortunately for use, the evaluation at this school was sane. We have an ongoing relationship with the school, so T has visited a couple of open houses, another event, and has visited during a normal day. The school staff were aware that he has a record of not interacting with strangers, so we have been building the level of recognition over time with the staff who would do the evaluation. And the testing was only one part of an overall evaluation (which included observation of multiple interactions with the current Kindergarten students).

So he did pass and got accepted for next year. Does test preparation make a difference? We actually got test prep materials (yes there are such a thing), but in the end, while we did read them, we did not use them, with life generally getting in the way, and we spent our time with him doing other things. The book we have, Testing for Kindergarten by Karen Quinn, probably would have preferred it that way. The core of the advise was that the best way to prepare was to interact with the child over a long period of time and develop the skills needed that way.  But the reality is that formal test prep could have made a very big difference in a child's performance. I joked that in the efforts to make a test that was cultural and background neutral, the tests give a big advantage to one major group. People who prepare for pre-school hish-stakes testing. Many of the questions are based on the fact that a person understands the concept being tested and the form of correct answers. The test prep books and programs are somewhat built around making sure the child is exposed to the types of questions being asked and how they get answered. They also run through the various topics. While the topics of questions are all topics that children can get exposed to, to be exposed to the whole range almost requires deliberate test preparation.

Tiger mommy finds it ironic that having geared up for preparing for high-stakes testing a year ago (as we realized the effects of an October birthday and the implication that it would have essentially meant repeating a year someplace), we did not actually put time into test preparation. Instead, while mommy school did involve reading and arithmetic workbooks (and recently, music), daddy school involved going to museums and other places, doing wood projects, and building LEGO.  And we were applying to a place that did assessment, but did so in a sane manner as part of an overall assessment that worked with the characteristics of the child in question.

In other news, A also had an assessment done. She is somewhat behind in motor skills development (does not crawl) so we had the Alliance for Infants and Children come (a free program for those under 3 in PA). The assessments results were highly encouraging, they think that the delay in crawling is due to a physical characteristic, which is not a long term problem. But, they also evaluated other aspects of development. I was very amused at the report. It frequently references the fact that A likes to play with her older brother.and how that relates to the way she babbles and plays (even if she does not crawl).  I even had T read those parts of the report. :-)

Gege is making Jello. Can I have some?

A does not really crawl, although she is now at the point that she will get on all fours and rock (and sometimes even move!)  But she does enjoy pitcking up things, banging them together (almost) stacking items Particularly amusing is when she goes into babbling mode. It is as if she is trying to hold a conversation.

This past month of parenting has had its share of concerns, but we leave it thankful that our children are active and engaged in their world, even for any faults they may have.

Parenting Month 52: Passing tests

A new belt

This month's milestone was T's advancement testing for Taekwondo. He passed! Of course, the issue is not if the dojang passes him, when dealing with pre-schoolers, it is silly to hold them to a real serious standard. The question at hand is how does he handle himself in a setting where he needs to perform on demand. The norm is to be scattered and play around, another common reaction is to freeze in nervousness (which is T's historical norm), the goal of a preschooler in a martial arts program is to pay attention and follow when being specifically addressed (and generally you accept being relatively stationary the rest of the time.)

Under those standards, T did very well.  As a child who does not like crowds, he handled the crowd and structure of testing day well (much bigger group than I have ever seen there). So we were gratified to see him dealing with it through chatting with the instructors (benefit of being one of the first to show up), concentrating on his forms, and even paying attention as it was everyone's turn. (of course, it probably was because he was trying to remember the forms of the upper ranks)

Another source of gratification is that he was focused during his turns. He was grouped with the smaller (i.e. younger) kids (4 year olds) and the obvious thing that makes 4 yr olds different than 6 yr olds is that 6 yr olds pay attention to what they are doing and the 4 yr olds generally did not.  So that he did focus on what he was supposed to was good to see. We don't often get a chance to see him in a setting with other kids his age, but being able to focus on what he is doing is something we have tried to encourage in many areas.

Other activities for the month include more cooking. I've been letting him work on the stove for making jello, pudding, and pies from mixes. And having him stir while the pot is on the stove. This has two problems, one the danger from a hot pot or stove, which is not as visually apparent as a knife blade is, second, that these required continuous stirring over a period of time. Reality is that his endurance is just short of what is needed here. If he gets to the point where he can stretch out another minute, he will reach the point where he can see the transitions in form caused by the food being exposed to heat. But for now, he likes the activity of doing something that we tell him is dangerous and that he needs to be careful around. And it provides another way of discussing perseverance and focus on task. (in addition to the usual comments about cooking being a good way to talk about math)

He continues to read more. This past month we have realized that he is pretty much out of the emerging reader series.  His current reading level is Dr. Seuss. The shorter books he reads happily away (including reading them to his baby sister) Long books such as Cat in the Hat are possible, but when he finished Cat in the Hat, he was tired (he did not realize how long the book was going to be.

Another area is preparation for kindergarden. I took T to an open house for one school that we are looking at (because they will take in someone who has not turned 5 before September). It looks promising. After a couple of rooms he warmed up to our student guides and was chatting away with them. I have noticed on previous occasions that the older kids are used to interacting with the younger ones, and had an opportunity to discuss it with some of the staff who explained how they encourage it. And we talked about how the evaluation would be done (basically, the primary evaluation would be from his preschool, which is not something that we will worry about).  There is a clear difference in T thriving in a smaller environment, and this is besides the fact that we don't like the idea of T being in pre-Kindergarden for a period approaching two years, then being in a half-day kindergarden (which is what our area is like). So this school has a lot of things going for it in our book.

A also had a big 9 month milestone.  Her first deliberate word (i.e. not counting the various vocalizations like mamamabababagagaga *sqwawk*)  ah-ooh, to be used when something drops or falls.  I'm particularly happy because I've been trying to train her to say this over breakfast all month.  And this was actually T's first deliberate word as well..  S thinks that ai-yaah is a candidate for a second word, which she clearly picked up from her big brother.  I'm not convinced that it is deliberate as opposed to mere mimicking.

Parenting Month 51: I can do that

Cutting peppers to go on a pizza

This month's catch phrase is "I can do that."  I think that a characteristic of the pre-school years is the see-saw back and forth between a child wanting to become independent, but wanting the security of the parents. In our case, it expresses itself in the form of competency. And right now, we are well into the development of competency side of the spectrum.  

Competency has a number of manifestations with T.  One is the reading. At this point, he is at the Dr. Seuss level of reading. The small books are easy. The longer classics are not hard, but they are long and they test his endurance more than his reading ability.  We are at the point where it is possible to put him on the floor or couch with a pile of books and he will read away.  What is really cute is when we put him next to A and he reads to his little sister (and she pays attention!).  The other place this shows up are LEGO sets. He can now read instructions well enough to follow instructions on reasonably complex sets (where the recommended age range begins at 8 or lower).  His most recent one was the LEGO Movie trash chomper (recommended age begins at 8). It took him three days to complete it, but he did it pretty much on his own.

Building a LEGO Master Builder Academy Space design #3

The second place that competency manifests is in taking part of tasks around the house. He can handle simple tools (hammer, screwdriver) and can do set tasks (nail in place, screw already set) and we have him at least touch many such tasks as they come up (he does not have the strength to finish the job).  Also light vegetable cutting (with a plastic knife) and food prep (mixing) is within his level of competence.

And while he has better and worse days, there are the days where he is very helpful around the house (cleaning up, clearing the table). Actually, there are days where he is hyper-polite and helpful. It is cute and almost funny as he says please and thank you and does things like get food, help prepare, put the used dishes in the sink, and even help take care of mei-mei (little sister), and he keeps this up all day! (the consistent use of polite words after an half an hour or so drives S and I to the point where we have to make an effort to keep from laughing)

Dinner time for mei-mei

The Taikwondo classes have been a contributor to this. Each month has a character building theme, and this month the theme was 'goals.' And part of the assessment is to develop a list of 10 goals, and for T, these were dominated by goals to do standard daily tasks himself (put on/take off shoes, jacket, clothes, etc.). He has gotten into it. He thinks of goals at all sorts of times (especially at night when we talk about what he did during the day) and he immediately wants to add it to the list (which he will remember the next morning!).  And reminding him that he declared something a goal is incentive enough for him to give it a good try.

Sibling interaction is another area where we are quite fortunate. T and A are quite fond of each other. A is easily amused by T's activities, and T actively assists in entertaining and taking care of A (given his size as a four year old). What is amusing is now that A is semi-mobile and can scoot, she tries to join in with whatever T is doing if he is close to reaching distance. And sometime he is not careful and she turns out to be a lot closer than he thought and can grab something.

A is turning into a babbler.  Typically, after she eats, she is good for an extended period of babbling away if there is a willing conversation partner. I usually get this dark and early in the morning when I get her when she is awake and everyone else wants to sleep longer. (typically after she gets fed) I get breakfast for myself and she babbles away.  Today I brought her to a Red Cross meeting and she amused everyone by babbling after eating (I took her out to a hallway) until she finally stopped, because she fell asleep!  Everyone joked that it sounded like she was telling a story, not just vocalizing.

As far as parenting was concerned, this was a very pleasant month. Both children being engaged in their worlds, and increasing their competencies at the level they are at. And both being well behaved in the outside world. While both are not pass around kids (neither of them takes well to strangers), we joke that they are both advertisements for having children and we both get encouraging comments while out and about.

Up next, getting ready for pre-kindergarden assessments for T (we really don't want to have him do pre-K again next year like his birthday would require, and his reactions to stranger can lead to problems when it is time to do assessment).  And we probably should try to get A out and about more for more interaction with people (even if we are in a cold northeastern winter!)

Lessons in teaching: Fall 2014 edition - Using the news

I had started using news articles to illustrate class concepts last year, but this year I started doing so from the very beginning and made it a standing part of the class to do this once a week in both of my classes last semester.  Of course, taking 10~30 minutes a week out of class came at a price.  In both cases it meant a chapter not being covered. And I pointed this out to the class when time came for course evaluations.

Every week I would identify news articles, magazine articles, or blog posts to discuss in class.  (or sometimes it was a historical case).  The discussion would always open by evaluating the article through a standard technique.  In my decision analysis class it was either generating a value tree or a decision tree.  In my simulation class it was generally generating an event diagram (i.e. a white board exercise).

The cases included the international and domestic (U.S.) handling of the Ebola outbreak, health care provider reactions to the rise of independent urgent care clinics, potential expansion of a light manufacturer, pulling a goalie in hockey in the final minutes, flu vaccinations, Corporate restructuring, the construction of super containerships, NASA Commercial Space initiatives, waving a (baseball) runner home, handling of death threats (Gamergate), Space Shuttle Challenger launch decision, automation of warehouses and manufacturing, delivery of disaster response services, and hub and spoke airline operations.

For the discussions themselves, it was a great way of getting students interested. Because of the wide range of topics, international, domestic US, health, industrial, sports, space, different people tended to get into different discussion topics, so across all of the cases, a very large portion of the classes contributed to the conversation at some point.

The other big benefit of the cases was to reinforce the modeling aspect of both classes. For decision models this meant many opportunities to consider the value tree and decision trees, even as we moved to other techniques and topics. For simulation, this was the chance to work on modeling while the course focused on analytical and statistical methods.  Even for those who did not take part in the class discussion, there were a few discussions that I think were particularly memorable.

One unexpected benefit was that I had an opportunity to engage in give and take.  Once we got past the first few sessions, we were comfortable with me questioning some of the responses, or asking to go a little deeper than the first answer.  (without scaring the student into a shell) Students also started asking questions, so we occasionally got a real discussion going.

Sometimes it was fairly light and even entertaining discussion (sports were good for that). And there were times that it went very serious (we looked at the decision not to provide protection from threats of mass murder with plans in Utah with Anita Sarkeesian (meaning it also involved the politics of gender oppression). Ebola was also a big one in September.

So, when compared to the loss of a chapter of coverage, I think that this was a worthwhile direction. The course evaluations commented on how much the students liked using current events as examples of material, and that they felt confident in modeling (which is only one or two chapters in each subject).  Compared to a chapter of material that would probably be forgotten, I'll take the tradeoff.

Small Town Heroes by Harmon: Book Review

Small Town Heroes by Marion G. Harmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So the main character of the series, Astra, gets herself taken away from Chicago, her home, and her friends, because she sees a vision of something she should not know anything about. She makes new friends, learns how to work with others who are extremely competent, and her old team gets to meet the new ones.

I liked this book because it maintains that in the world of superheroes, the most dangerous ones are the ones that can plan. Astra is depicted as someone who is learning how to do this, and she spends the book recognizing she is around people who do it well. A team of third-string supersoldiers is depicted as being a match for a first-string villian because of teamwork, and these opponents are the most dangerous, not because they are the most powerful that Astra has faced, nor because the Young Sentinals are weaker than the main Sentinal team, but because this group works well together. All of the supers (and other leadership figures) are highly competent and dangerous, and that makes for a better story than many.

The book can get a little corny/sappy occasionally, and that may be because the main character is a pixie teenage girl. But it helps that everyone is competent, and the main hero, while competent and universally accepted, still has much to learn and the others around her have much to teach

View all my reviews

Parenting Month 50: A-T-A yaaa! enrichment and assertiveness

We're reading instructions for mommy at the Carnegie Science Center.  This is the next step.   http://foldtheflock.org

We have finally caved in to the suburban parenting pattern of enrichment classes.  In our case we focused on the one thing that we do not provide: lessons in assertiveness.  And the vehicle we chose was a local taekwondo studio that had started out around two years ago.  We are not particularly interested in mastery, although if T wants this to be his sport for his growing up years, we would not be particularly disappointed. But we want him to relate to other adults (or at least older people) who are authority figures and can give instruction for him to follow and command respect.

Actually, we are more interested in that he can build confidence in action outside the safe harbor that we provide when we teach him things.  When we first went, they were telling us about how martial arts classes in pre-schoolers helps in the case of pre-schoolers who need to burn off energy and bounce of the walls at home. As we have a child whose worst episodes of acting up are probably laughable to most parents of pre-schoolers, we replied that was not the problem. But what we are worried about is that he grow in confidence in action.

He is an introvert, and the son of two introverts, who are fully aware that much of the world is organized and evaluated with extroverts in mind.  And we see that in his daycare. He was part of a trio of introverted boys. They have separated on their fourth birthdays to another daycare, the pre-K at our daycare, and the second pre-K class. And the one in the other pre-K class is worried of him being lost in the shuffle (it is large, the size is at the room physical limit.  While on academic and artistic levels he is expressive (he is in a small class), when it comes to crowds (they merge in the afternoon) he still withdraws amidst the hurly burly of 20+ preschoolers running around.

The first sessions were what would be expected. As the class does their warmups, exercises, and yells, he withdraws.  But, in a credit for this school (and the fact that there are few beginners at any point in time) he got some personal assistance from the school owner.  So the first few session, he essentially had private classes, and now he takes his place with the rest of the (small) class.  Progress!, and kudos for the school!

In other areas, he is enjoying his small, pre-K class. There are only around 8 students, and reports are that he is active talker in the group activities; circle time, singing, etc.  Arts are slow, as he is very deliberate so projects take much longer than others, but he does them.  He reverts to form when the classes merge in the afternoon (the extra space for the second pre-K class has another purpose in the afternoon).

He is increasing his academic abilities.  With LEGO we went through the City Advent Calendar, which required that he take a small number of blocks and figure out how to make the object based on an iso-picture, as the month progressed, he was getting noticeably better at the spatial awareness, and doing the Christmas presents was much better at figuring out instructions by himself. He is also getting better at working with random pieces, as we build things and make up story lines to go with them.

He enjoys reading, especially as he is much more competent at phonics. He will pick out new books, and while he may ask us to read it, by 3-4 pages in he is doing most of the reading. We find it especially amusing when we he reads books to his little sister, because he does it using a teacher voice (as much as a four year old can imitate a teacher).

Making patterns with shapes on a light table

A is becoming a sneaky little baby girl. She has started manipulative play, taking toys and waving them around. She can move things to her mouth, such as a toy, or more useful, her pacifier (funny event, sometimes when she wants to cry, she will use her hand to move the pacifier over so she can cry more effectively).  Our other big observation was that she is now mobile.  She can scoot. At the beginning of the month, we were not sure, because she does not move that fast.  But give her a few minutes, she will have noticeably scooted on the playmat towards a desired goal.  Our funny moment was when T was trying to play with A's toys (on the pretext of teaching A how to play with them), and she scooted over a couple feet and picked up one of his completed LEGO sets.  We see a lot of that in the future.