I love summer and I love summer vacation. Unfortunately I’m not a student, nor do I get summers off from work. As a result, the summer vacation phenomena is quite a disruption to our normal family routine.  Where my kids will be out of school for 2-3 months, I will be lucky to take a week off during this time.

I work from home. When the kids are at school,my “office” is fairly quiet. However when the kids are home it’s sometimes difficult to maintain the boundaries between Mom and Career Woman. If I hear the kids argue my first reaction is to intervene as Mom.  And, if they need something their first reaction is to come into my office and bug me.  “Mom, can I go to a friend’s house?” “Mom, can I watch a movie?” and so on…  I’ve learned it takes approximately a week to re-establish boundaries so my kids understand my working time vs. Mom time.

Another adjustment required during the summer vacation is overcoming boredom.  Last year, it took 4 hours after my daughter was out of school before she said, “Mom, I’m bored”.  Ugh. I try to instill that they need to work on entertaining themselves, but I do feel for them – we aren’t wealthy enough to do something extravagant every day and finding something inexpensive to do (or better yet – FREE) is difficult.

Then there’s the reminder of the upcoming school year. Children forget the lessons learned, and it’s a difficult battle to explain to my kids on why I’m having them do homework during their summer vacation.  Educators say it can take up to two months in the fall for teachers to review old lessons and bring students up to par. By providing them a little homework throughout the summer I’m attempting to minimize the re-education process and also combat summer boredom.

There will be time to spend with family, friends, and maybe go on the occasional trip during the summer. But for those of us parents who work during the summer it’s difficult to balance work and family life, especially when the children are not attending school during the day.

My daughter came armed with letters that Abigail had written to her husband in 1776:

“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Did the 1st Lady really threaten that there would be a rebellion against the government? Did she really state that the laws of the government do not apply to women if they don’t have a voice? This was the forefront of giving women a right to vote! How is that not exciting! Alas, to a 1st grader, receiving a penny from the Abe Lincoln character was more thrilling.
My daughter had to research what Adams would have worn, what her childhood was like, what made her famous, and what contributions she made to history. Not only did she need to complete an essay about Adams, but she also had to come up with a costume and be prepared to answer questions as if she was Adams. She even researched whether or not Adams spoke in an ‘English’ accent. This made learning exciting and it resonated with the 8th graders. I believe it hit the mark with the younger kids as well.
I have to give it up to the teacher for encouraging her class to get to know someone from our US history. Rather than simply teaching by the text book, taking the tests, or writing the occasional essay, this teacher recognized the opportunity for the kids to truly learn about an individual who made a difference in US history. I hope that other teachers can take note of this type of teaching – finding fun and unique ways of teaching our kids about those who helped shape this nation.

I would have liked to see the parade of US figures walking down the street today – “Abigail” was also accompanied by Susan B. Anthony, Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Betsy Ross, George Washington Carver, John Adams, Sacagawea, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. That would have been a sight to see…

http://www.pcworld.com/article/225236/forge_your_own_path_with_delightfully_twisted_hommage_a_escher_font.html

The Lemonade Game was a very, very early precursor to the Sim City-style games of the turn of the century. And, for those of use in Ms. Safran’s 4th Grade G&T pullout class, it was the best reward she could ever offer us.

About ten years ago, I found the Coolmath4kids website, and the first thing I did was play a 30-day game of Lemonade Stand. It only took me three “days” to recall my trademarked secret recipe with the perfect ratio of lemons to sugar to ice to make almost any day a profitable day.

The memories this rekindled alone were fantastic, but the game play remains fun and challenging enough to promote it on this site.

Whether you are someone old enough to have played the game when you were young or you work with young people aged 8 – 18, I suggest you check out the game (and the rest of the coolmath4kids site).

You can play the Lemonade Game at http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/index.html.

I embraced some of these fandoms whole-heartedly (others I replaced with my own less mainstream interests, such as Dan Fouts Chargers, Dan Majerle’s Suns, The Fixx, etc., ), and I see exposing my son to these as both a parenting duty and a reward.  Of the pop-culture passions from my youth, one of the most fun to share has been Godzilla.

Godzilla, the Japanese man in a rubber suit with all the glorious toy tank smashing, Kaiju wrestling, and fantastic music, has become one of my son’s favorites, and I have happily watched him share the phenomenon with his friends.

Let me clarify that we are not speaking of the Godzilla-creature from the 1998 Matthew Broderick film (aka GINO – Godzilla in Name Only or ‘zilla), we are talking about the original TOHO monster.

My son is a fan of all the classic films, but he tends to share Destroy All Monsters or Final Wars with his friends as a gateway film, just because the target audience is so desperate for action these days. I’m not worried, though, because he will just as happily sit and watch Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, or any of the older films.  Where I used to have to wait to watch them weekends on Channel 11 or Channel 9, he can simply hit a button on his Zune – but the passion for the films is still there.

We own all the Godzilla video games for Nintendo systems and have a couple of Godzilla toys and shirts from various sources.  One of the best things we’ve discovered was Kaiju Big Battel. We first found Kaiju Big Battel as part of Monkey Bar TV’s Action Blast! But when that show ended, we continued to follow the mayhem, and last year we attended our first live Kaiju Big Battel match.

(Someone else took this video, not me – I just found it on youtube… but you can see me in the upper right corner, wearing a red shirt, at the 6:15 mark) It was one of the greatest experiences we’ve shared to date, and I can’t wait to go back again.

That’s pretty much been my whole vibe on sharing Godzilla with my son. Sharing Star Wars has been awesome. Being San Diego Charger fans together is incredible. But there’s something about Godzilla and watching my boy sell others on the fandom that shoots it right up to the top of the list.

As multimedia becomes more prevalent in classrooms, this is a great video to share with classes of all grade levels. Besides the entertainment value, you can use this as a springboard for additional exercises:

• Can students write an expression to model all the man is saying?
• If the price of an apple is ____, how much will the man end up paying?
• Can the students solve a collection of narrative problems similar to the man’s story?
• Can students create a comparable story and act it out for their classmates?

Click to Enlarge

This image is one of three quizzes asking you to figure out movie titles expressed as math pictograms among the comics at spikedmath.com.

The other quizzes can be accessed by clicking these links: Quiz 2 Quiz 3.

If you aren’t already familiar with the site, Spikedmath.com hosts regularly updated math themed comics and is well worth your time exploring.

While these quizzes or and the math comics may not be grade-level appropriate, you should be able to find at least a few to use as examples of the clever way mathematics is used and to inspire your students/children to develop similar projects: creating their own math-themed comics or pictograms of song titles, TV shows, common phrases.

This artwork was designed by “art101″ and sold on a t-shirt at http://shirt.woot.com back in 2010.  Unfortunately, the shirt is no longer available to purchase; however, the image remains an interesting way to introduce, explore, or revisit the concept of order of operations with your child(ren).

Novelty t-shirt sites are often home to imaginative ways of re-expressing ideas educators and parents wish to emphasize. Consider this Venn Diagram design from snorgtees.com,

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There are many sites where you will find novelty t-shirts with clever puns and witty representations of concepts that children are learning. We do not endorse or have an affiliation with any of these sites or artists. Our intent is soley to bring to your attention the existence of this artwork.

[Please be advised: the links in this post will take you to images that ARE appropriate for all ages. However, if you explore other parts of the snorgtees or shirt.woot sites you MAY encounter a few designs with Spencers'-style suggestive humor which some people may consider inappropriate for younger children.]