ETC: Pick Your Own

Close to us is a blueberry farm that operates on the self pick model. Most farms grow their product and harvest with machines or with hired labor and then rely on re-sellers, stores, to get their product to the public. I imagine that over the long haul this is the most efficient model as it's widely followed. There are a few farmers though that sell you not only their crop, but the experience of picking it yourself. We pick blueberries, but there are also strawberries, apples and various other fruits that we could pick. I kind of wish you could pick cows like this. Look over the herd, pet a few of them, decide which one you want to eat and then take them to the butcher. That would be more fun that just picking steak in the store, but I digress.
We've been taking the kids to pick blueberries for about six years now and it's always been a good time. The particular farm we go to is organic, which I'm usually ambivalent about, but when the little kids are shoveling berries straight from the bushes into their months as fast as they can, it's a good feeling. The picking used to go slow as we spent as much time corralling kids as we did picking. The sessions were also short. We could pick for as long as it took kids to fill up and start feeling sick to their stomach (don't worry, eating berries is encouraged by the management). This year though we really got in the groove. The berries were fat, the kids are getting big enough to contribute to the poundage, and the weather was perfect. We came home with 26.5 pounds of berries. That's a lot of berries. We might have gone slightly overboard. We ate about half of them and froze the other half. We'll enjoy them through the rest of the year.

With a little bit of internet searching you can probably find someplace near you that will let you pick your own fruits and enjoy them. There probably won't be much cost savings when it's all said and done, but you get to show your kids where their food comes from. Real apple trees. Real blueberry bushes. It's fun and instructional and I highly recommend spending half a day out picking your own.

ETC: Water Balloons

Water balloons need no explanation. You just don't get permission to throw things at people very often when you're a kid, and when you do, you're usually supposed to throw it so they can catch it. There are two notable exceptions to that rule. 1. Snowballs, which is sort of a terrible exception here in Texas. It's like telling kids in Alberta that it's ok to play with jellyfish. 2. Water balloons. The batch you see in the picture is for my second water balloon fight today. The first was with 40 preschoolers. Somehow I was the only parent that got right into the middle of it. Just a note about water balloon fights with preschoolers, you can't throw them at them. They're too little, you just can't. What you can do it catch them and then pop them over their little heads. It's good to be tall. The second fight is this evening at soccer practice. These are kids from 10-13, so I'm thinking that I can hurl a few. My wife will be there too, so I might still pop a few over a head. Maybe.
They take forever to fill, the action lasts mere minutes, and it takes forever to pick up the pieces, but water balloons are fun. Just plain fun.

ETC: The Complete Adventures of Curious George

Where it all begins.

We all know Curious George. He's the creation of Margret and H. A. Rey and has been loved since the first book was published in 1941. Along with that first book, the couple wrote many other adventures for the curious little monkey, and there are seven of them in this volume. 
Curious George
Curious George Takes a Job
Curious George Rides a Bike
Curious George Gets a Medal
Curious George Flies a Kite
Curious George Learns the Alphabet
Curious George Goes to the Hospital.
All of the stories are good and all have been read many times at our house. I find it interesting how much certain things have changed since the books are written. In the first story George settles down for a nice pipe smoke after dinner and later on moves into the Zoo, which is assumed to be about the happiest place a monkey can live. In the second one George's curiosity leads him to experiment with Ether and end up passed out on the floor. At that end of that book the man in the yellow hat celebrates with a cigar as he profits from George's blossoming acting career. In fact, all of the first five stories have someone smoking in them, usually a pipe. I can't imagine submitting a book today where the main character, one that children are supposed to love, sits down for a nice smoke before bed. Older books are fun.
The book also contains an introduction that tells about the Rey's life as German Jew's who managed to leave Germany in the 30's and then to escape France just ahead of the German army on June 14, 1940. They led a fascinating life of travel and art and literature and periodically writing stories of their most popular legacy, Curious George.

ETC: Up

Up is a Disney Pixar movie that came out in 2009, and as with most movies made by that corporate duo, it was pretty darn good. My kids liked the story, liked the dogs, liked the ending, liked the movie. I don't know how much to say about it and not give the story away, so I won't say much about the main story line. What I will discuss is the first 10 minutes of the movie.
In that first 10 minutes, one of the best love stories ever told in cinema is shown. It's told almost purely in images, there is little speaking. It is joyful and heatbreaking in a way that's hard to describe. Two people meet, they share dreams, and they fall in love with the intention of fulfilling those dreams together. As so often happens in real life, dreams get pushed back a little here, and a little there. As quickly as you are sucked in and have tears streaming down your cheeks, their story ends, and the real movie begins. If that was it, if all you ever saw of Up was the first 10 minutes, you would be a better person for it.
I know it's mother's day this weekend and you should really be letting mom pick any movies you watch, but if you can nudge her in a certain direction, Up would be a good one. Snuggle close, hold hands, cry a little together, and then have fun with the rest of the movie. It's a good one.

ETC: Dick and Jane

The Dick and Jane series of books have been a staple of children's literature since the 1930's when they were used to teach reading to kids in school. They've been undated and revised and they were re-issued in 2003. Though they were once the standard for teaching kids to read, but they've fallen way out of favor for that task. They were originally very homogenous in there depictions of race and culture. This made them hard to relate too if you weren't white and middle class, and it's hard to learn to read things that you don't understand. They've also been criticized for poorly focusing on the basics of reading and just not doing a good job of what they are supposed to do. Despite all of that, we have a bunch of them, and our kids have indeed used them to learn to read. First I want to say that these aren't kids books like you are probably used to. They are not books to read to your kids. They suck for that. They are books for your kids to read to you. They are very simple, they are very repetitive and they should be tossed aside once they've been mastered. Used like that, they're a great tool and I don't hesitate to recommend them. The kids are able to read them not too long after learning letter sounds, they seem to enjoy them, and they get a real sense of accomplishment when they finish a chapter. They can get done with a book and know that they can read, and that makes them quite happy with themselves and with reading. They're not perfect, but they have value. We like them.
Of course, if you find Dick and Jane too pedestrian, and what to spice things up, you can always try Dick and Jane and Vampires.

ETC: Feeding the Fish

Don't....fall.....in.....

I love this guy.

Outside my wife's office is a scenic waterway. Like most waterways in Texas, it's artificial, but that's ok, it's pretty and you can take a nice walk along it and you can feed the fish. The fish are mostly bluegills and they are hungry. Very hungry. Watching them eat reminds you of every piranha movie you've ever seen and it's slightly terrifying. I really don't want to fall in. We feed them any leftover bread butts or pancakes or waffles that I've thrown into a bag in the freezer just for this. Sometimes a rather big catfish comes up from the deep to suck in a piece of bread which is pretty exciting. More rarely, all of the action attracts a giant spiny soft shell turtle. That guy is a sight to behold, and he seems to like eating bread as much as anyone else there.

We usually feed the fish when we visit my wife at work for a picnic lunch. We sit by the water and eat our lunches and hang out and feed the fish. When they have the time off school it's a nice break in our day. We get an extra hour with mommy on a work day, and we get to feed the fish. It's good fun.

ETC: Ten Little Ladybugs

In my earlier post about The Elephant Alphabet Book, I talked about the importance of having an ABC book to read to your kids. Reading is a fundamental skill and the ABC's, the letters and their sounds, are the foundation of that. Another fundamental skill is counting. Counting is different though, because at it's most basic level, it's real in a way that reading isn't. Letters and the sounds they make are abstract, they differ across languages, they're almost arbitrary. Numbers on the other hand, are real. Sure, we use different names for them in different languages, but two of something is two of something whether you're speaking English or French or Mandarin. Because counting and numbers are more real, more a part of our physical world, learning to count is different. Like I said before, two is two. There are two of them, you can see them, you can touch them, there are physically two. Now add one, and you have three, and they're physically different than two. Counting is tactility different than reading. For that reason I recommend counting books that are tactile, books where you can physically touch the objects you're counting. I don't have a specific recommendation as I don't think the particular book matters. We have had Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth for all of our kids and it has worked well. Every page has a different number of little plastic ladybugs glued to it. The story starts with 10, and you lose one with each page flip. On each page you can touch the little bumpy ladybugs and count them, one, two, three....
There are lots of different ways to teach counting and all of them are important. A number book with physical tactile things to count might be something to add to the arsenal.

ETC: Houston Livestock Show

Moo.

I grew up going to the county fair in Michigan. The fair ran for a week, everyone went when it was open, and you had fun. Coming from that background, nothing could prepare me for the spectacle that is the Houston Livestock show and Rodeo. This event runs for 20 days, and has over two million visitors during that time. There is a rodeo every night followed by a headline concert. The junior livestock shows are much like at any county fair, but the stakes are much higher. The grand champion junior steer sold for $460,000 this year. It's like every county fair in a medium state all happening at the same time. It's a spectacle worth attending.
We've attended the rodeo and the concerts a few times in the past, and they're a really good time. We usually just go to the livestock show though, we cruise the animals, go to the petting zoo, go on a few rides, and generally have a fun day out and about.
The story of a trip like this is really best told through pictures, so click through the jump to see how the day went.

ETC: Harold and the Purple Crayon

Harold and the Purple Crayon was written in 1955 by Crockett Johnson, so if you're reading this then you've likely read it as a kid, or to your kids, or even to your grandkids. The fact that the book has continuously been in print for almost 60 years lets you know that it has staying power. The story follows Harold as he decides to go for a walk at night. It's dark and he draws everything he sees with his purple crayon. In fact, everything in the stories, except for Harold himself comes from his crayon. It's a whimsical story that sees Harold get scared, save himself, get hungry, be kind, explore, and make it home in time to tuck himself in for bed. The kids love it and I love reading it to them.
Crockett Johnson wrote and illustrated a total of seven books about Harold and his adventures. In the edition we have, The Adventures of Harold and the Purple Crayon, Four Magical Stories, we have the origional Harold and The Purple Crayon as well as Harold's Fairy Tale, Harold's Trip to the Sky, and Harold's Circus. They're all great stories. The books have all been made into animated shorts and they're quite good. The also spawned a follow up cartoon series on TV that wasn't as good. That series spun off some books and they're ok, but not as good as those Mr. Johnson wrote himself. Stick to the originals here.
The Harold books tell simple well told stories about a little boy who is imaginative, self reliant, and very creative. They're truly childhood classics and well worth adding to your bookshelf.

ETC: Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep

I've got another set of shows to watch that I heartily approve of. We'll start with the DVD that's in the title, Wallace & Gromit, Three Amazing Adventures. These movies follow our hapless hero, Wallace, and his more intelligent and resourceful dog, Gromit. They are stop motion animation done by the same group that did Chicken Run and the newer movie The Pirates: Band of Misfits and they are brilliant. They involve inventions that are improbable and wacky that always misfunction. Wallace gets himself into trouble and Gromit saves him, every time. It's not a new formula but it's done so well that the kids and I are always entertained. There is a third 30 minute show on DVD, A Matter of Loaf and Death, and a feature length film, The Curse of the Were Rabbit. All are worth it.
In the third show on this disk, A Close Shave,  you're introduced to Shaun the Sheep. He's a minor character in the episode and you might think it ends there. However, if you have Netflix and can stream shows, it gets better. Shaun the Sheep went on to live with a farmer and his dog Blitzer and he became the head of the flock. They had 26 adventures over two seasons of production and have quite a few other specials out there. The comedy is all physical, there is no speaking outside of baas from the sheep and barks from the dog. The farmer only grumbles, and he does that a lot. These shows are at the absolute top of what anyone should watch on Netflix if they have children. We should be crashing their servers with our demand on movie nights. I'm serious, it's that good.
If your kids are going to sit down and watch TV, you should sit down next to them. If you're going to sit down next to them, you might as well be watching something awesome. At the top of that list should be Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep.

ETC: The Elephant Alphabet Book

Reading is important. It's really important. It's really really important. Reading well above grade level is probably the biggest advantage that you can give your kids in school. It makes every single thing in school easier. I'm never going to promote those teach your baby to read type programs that you see on TV. Those are just silly. What I will always promote is good old fashioned sit down with your kids and learn phonics based reading. Read to them a lot. Teach them their letters. Teach them the letter sounds. Point to the words when you read them and all of that jazz. It's not hard and it's worked for a lot of kids for a very long time. Repetition is important to learning and since you end up reading certain books over and over and over to your kids anyway, you should try and make sure that one of them is an alphabet book. Big letters, not abstract, pretty pictures with them, bright colors. Flip the page and ask them what the letter is. Make the sound. Make sure that the text of the book uses the sounds over and over with a particular letter. The word move becomes MMMMMMMMove when you read it. The word balloon becomes BBBBBBalloon.
We've taught all of our kids their letters and sounds with The Elephant Alphabet Book by Gene Yates. It has worked well, but there is no reason to choose this one over any other. As you can see from the picture, we even got it on super sale at a half priced book store. When the kids are in that two to three and a half range they seem ripe to really learn the alphabet and the sounds. At least 3 or 4 times a week I'd have them pick a book to read and I'd grab the Elephant Alphabet Book and we'd sit down and read them both. It's not structured learning and it doesn't feel like it. It's just reading books. It's interacting with your kid as you point at the letters and say them and them have them repeat them.
I can't stress how important I think it is to teach your kids to read. Imagine a world where all kindergartners could read at a basic level the first day. Imagine a world where all of the six graders could read at a high school level. Think of the savings in teaching time and frustration. Think of the resources that would free up for those kids that truly have learning disabilities and really need extra outside help learning to read. This is a big deal, and all it takes is a book and time on the couch reading it with your child.

ETC: Day at the Races

Real race car, real fun.

A few weekends ago I took my son to the SCCA regional races at MSR Houston. It was a long drive and a long day but it was worth it for the both of us. I'd read about SCCA club racing for years and I think I would really like to try it. It seemed to make sense to at least go and visit and see if it was everything I thought it could be. It was. These are real amateur racers racing real race cars. It's not quite what you see on TV, but there are some real advantages to that. The big one is that we could walk around the paddock and just ogle the cars. I pointed out some interesting production based cars to my son as well as some normal road cars that were pretty incredible. We also got to see a few real purpose built race cars. At one point we came around the edge of a trailer and saw a gentleman working on a Formula Vee. I wanted to point out to him that it was the same kind of car that he had seen watching Mighty Machines on TV. Well, the nice guy working on the car saw us and waved us over to talk. It turns out he was the father of the driver, Charlie Hearn, and was getting the car ready for the race. He talked about the car and insisted that we stay while he buttoned things up so my son could sit in the car. It was a real treat. We cheered him on in the race and he was doing very well until transmission troubles put him out of the race.
We had a great father son day and truthfully it was probably as much entertain the daddy as it was entertain the children.

ETC: The Big Hungry Strawberry

The book I'm writing about today isn't actually titled The Big Hungry Strawberry. That would be silly, who ever heard of a big hungry strawberry. The title is actually The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood. One day, one of the kids brought me the book and I was feeling silly. I said "YAY! The Big Hungry Strawberry, I love that book" and they laughed and laughed and how silly I was. So from then on it became known as The Big Hungry Strawberry, and it's still funny. This book follows Little Mouse and his adventures picking a big red ripe strawberry. He's immediately informed that big hungry bears love red ripe strawberries and he spends the rest of the book trying to protect it. Eventually he agrees to split it with the reader as a way of making it inaccessible to the bear. The book is fun, you're talking directly to the character and they are reacting to what you as a reader are saying. We never meet the bear but he tromps through the forest on his big hungry feet, BOOM BOOM BOOM and with some feeling as a reader, you can really get your kids into it. Like most of the other board books I love, you and your kids become more than just passive listeners to the narrative, you become part of the story. That's the kind of thing that makes kids love books and eventually love reading. Be prepared though, when books are good like this one, you'll end up reading them thousands of times. It's worth it.

ETC: Avatar - The Last Airbender

We don't watch a whole lot of TV. Mostly that's because we've gotten ourselves into a situation where it's very difficult to watch it. We used to have cable, but we didn't watch much TV, even then. So I built an antenna which enabled us to get local TV and we canceled our cable. Now we have fewer channels and there's less on so we watch even less TV. Now that we watch even less TV, it seems like it would be silly to get cable again. We'd just be paying more for more TV to watch more TV and it's hard to feel like a good parent making that decision, so we're stuck.
We do watch movies though. Every Friday and Saturday night we sit down and watch a movie for somewhere between half and hour and an hour. This usually lets us split a normal movie between both nights. It's a family thing, it's fun. It is sometimes hard to find movies that are good for an age range of four to ten. You don't want to freak out the little ones, but you don't want to bore the big ones. That's why when my brother gave the kids Avatar - The Last Airbender for Christmas a few years ago, we were skeptical. I mean really, how could my childless younger brother possibly have the inside scoop on something that would be appropriate for my kids? And something I'd never heard of? Impossible! But he was right. His youth and complete refusal to grow up when I was off pretending to be an adult in college had kept him clued in to this incredible TV show that blew right by me.
The series follows Aang, the last of a tribe of people who can manipulate air at their will to fight. On top of that, he's also the reincarnated Avatar, a sort of supreme being who can control all of the elements, air, water, fire and earth, and is supposed to keep balance and peace between the tribes that have the ability to control each. It sounds a little weird, and in some ways it is, but it's brilliant. It's engaging to everyone from my youngest all the way up to me. It has action and comedy that everyone can cheer and laugh with. It has a few scenes that are so well written, so emotional, that I was literally crying. In short, it's always appropriate and simply brilliant.
There are 61 episodes between the three sets, Air, Water and Fire. Each episode is just over 20 minutes long and we generally watched two a night, four a weekend. Even with quite a few other movies to choose, we've watched it all the way through twice in the last few years. Often when there's a movie on for the kids I'm sitting off to the side reading a book either because I've seen the movie already or because I'm just not interested in it. When Avatar is on, I'm right there in the middle of the couch with kids piled all around me, as engaged in the show as they are. A big thanks to my brother, I owe you one.

ETC: Goodnight Gorilla

Depending on what type of reader you are, Goodnight Gorilla is either awesome, or it sucks. If you just want to sit down and read the words out loud then you're screwed, because there are very very few words in the book. Just the zoo keeper saying goodnight to everyone and heading off to bed. The storytelling in the book is what's happening outside the words. The animals escaping and following the zoo keeper home and crawling into bed with him and his wife without them noticing. You get to point out the action in the pictures and ask your kids if they see what's happening and if they can guess what's going to happen next. Once they catch on, it never fails to entertain them that they know what's coming and what that zany gorilla is going to pull off at the end. The book is always the same, but because you and your kids provide nearly all of the narration to the story, it's also always just a bit different. It's fun and engaging in ways that lots of other books aren't.
This is one of my top 10 board books for little kids. I'm going to try and work through my favorites over the next few months and then I'll move on to books for older kids. When I get to them I'll be in less of a hurry, but we're in the closing days of board books in our house. I'm trying to get the good ones sorted before they all go away.

ETC: Monster Trucks

A monster truck jumping a flipped monster truck. Awesome.

Monster trucks are completely idiotic, and that's what makes them awesome. The world doesn't need monster trucks, they exist purely for entertainment. Every boy (and probably girls too) at one point or another figures out that if you just put bigger tires on your car, you could drive it over everything. You could drive it over cars and your house and even the whole world! It would be awesome! Then you get bigger and realize that you couldn't really do that. Cars are the way they are for a reason and aside from the technical details, you can't just drive over other people's cars, they'd get mad. Even though you know that, there's always just a bit of that little kid in you that still wants to do it.
The monster trucks come to town every year and we've been going to see them for the past five years. It never gets old. They weigh 10,000 pounds and have 1500 horsepower and and they smash cars for goodness sake! The show we go to starts out with head to head racing and ends with a one at a time show off exhibition of jumping and smashing things for style points. All of my kids pick their favorite truck at the beginning of the night and cheer for them. Inevitably there are trucks that roll over and get smashed up. Tires pop and fall right off the wheel. There's carnage, there has to be, it's what a sold out stadium demands. Thousands of fans cheering while the driver climbs on his (or her) upturned, broken, truck with arms raised in victory.

Earphones are needed. It's loud. Very loud.

Monster trucks are one of those things that you have to experience to really feel. It's like the ballet in that respect. You can't believe you'd pay to watch people dance out a story on stage. Sure, it's cute when my kids do it, but miming out a story in dance? Really? Except it's beautiful and moving. And in a way, so are monster trucks. The technology and the work that is required to get 10,000 pounds moving that fast and flying that far and doing it safely for the driver and the fans is pretty amazing. The fact that they don't do it for any purpose other than entertainment is wonderful in it's own way too. If you live someplace where the monster trucks do a show, and if you've ever had, or been, a kid who thought that smashing cars with a big huge truck sounded like a good idea, I highly recommend going. The kids love it, and so do I.

ETC: Polar Bear Polar Bear

I've been posting about food on Tuesdays and Thursdays but I'm going to mix things up. It's not that I'm running out of recipes, in fact I have a backlog of food to write about, it's just that I want to try something different for a bit. I'll still be writing about food on Tuesdays, but on Thursday I'm starting a new piece that I call Entertain The Children.
Everyone who has children does stuff with them. Whether it's reading books or watching movies or going out to do things, we do stuff with our kids. Anybody who has had their two year old bring them a terrible book over and over knows that not all entertainment is created equal. Some books are fun for your kids but simply terrible for you. There are some kids books that I love that my kids want to hide from me so I won't read it to them again. The same applies to movies and outings and everything else. I'm going to try and write about things that have had appeal for both me and the kids. These are things that we have done together that have made us all happy. When everyone is happy, well, everyone is happy.
I'm going to start with the favorite book of our kids when they were very little. This is the first book that they sat through willingly and wanted read to them over and over. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've read it thousands of times. Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle is one of the greats. Some people like Brown Bear Brown What Do You See, and it's good, but with that you're just looking at stuff. When you read Polar Bear, you're listening. Not just to the words, but to the animal sounds. In order to read the book right, you, as a dad, need to make the sounds. You need to growl like a polar bear, roar like a lion, snort like a hippopotamus, flute like a flamingo, bray like a zebra, hiss like a boa constrictor, trumpet like an elephant, snarl like a leopard, yelp like a peacock bellow like a walrus and whistle like a zoo keeper. Make the noises, make them real. Ask your kids to make them back. We first learn speech by mimicking and all of my kids could mimic the animal noises that I made even before they could mimic my words. There's probably something fundamentally educational going on here.

By the time they're about 3 they move on to bigger and better things, but for a few years, I never got tired of growling and snarling and fluting and whistling. It's a good time, a great book to share.