Games Kids Love: Story Dice

Santa brought the kids this set of story dice for Christmas, and like most of his stocking gifts (so weird that Santa mostly brings the children educational toys...), I expected that they would mostly be put away in the playroom, and discovered and played with just every now and then. That's where the interactive book on cool things that you can do with mirrors lives, after all, still not played with, and the water clock kit, still not played with.

To my surprise, however, the kids LOVE these story dice! They play with them at least once a week (we have an indulgent amount of playthings for the children, so weekly play is a pretty good record), and even bring them out to play with during playdates, during which it seems that their friends like them, too.

To use the story dice (this may not actually be how you're "supposed" to use the story dice--I've never looked to see if there are any instructions, but this is how the kids have used them from the beginning), you simply roll them--

--and then make up a story that uses each one. Each die has little images engraved onto each side that direct the story, but are quite open to interpretation:

Syd and I played this game recently, on an afternoon that Will spent at the library. Here are some of her stories:

Cute, right?

It's been a while since we've carried on with our art lessons, although I do often remind the kids, when we're drawing together, to remember the Drawing With Children shape families and the Drawing with Children rule that we should work with mistakes instead of, as Syd would prefer, crumpling up the paper and throwing a giant fit. But anyway, these dice would also fit well into a Drawing with Children-style study, since the lines are clean and simple: you could take turns rolling the dice one by one, incorporating each into your drawing as it comes.

Ooh, or written storytelling--perhaps you could just roll one or two, and use that as a story starter. Or roll them one at a time after every paragraph, as a "What happens next?" game.

Or gross motor skills, acting, and improv--Charades can be hard for little ones, but these would be a manageable number of prompts to roll from and act out, especially if they're familiar with the dice.

Got any other good games to recommend to us? Summer is birthday season in our family!

Tutorial: Pippi Longstocking Hairdo

Y'all know I'm a big nerd, right?

The whole lot of us recently went to a children's theater performance of Pippi Longstocking, and I could not pass up the opportunity to do a little cosplay with the kids. Here's how:

1. You need to score some bendable floral or jewelry wire. The 18-gauge jewelry wire that I had on hand was perfect for Syd's light, straight hair, but didn't hold Will's thick, curly mop quite as well.
2. Measure out a length of the bendable wire that's long enough to go over the top of the kid's head and down each side the length of their hair. Cut it from the spool with a pair of wire cutters.
3. Comb and divide the kid's hair in two down a center part. 
4. This is the big trick: center the wire at the top of the kid's head, and get another person or the kid to hold it there. Having both braids made from a single piece of wire anchors it, so that you can bend each of the braids into more drastic contortions.
5. Comb and divide the hair on one side into three sections above the ear; include the bendable wire with the center section.
6. Braid the hair as usual, braiding the wire with it as part of the kid's hair. Tie off the braid at the bottom, then use the wire cutters to cut off any excess wire below the tie (you may want to bend it back onto itself first, so that it won't have a sharp end that sticks out).
7. Adjust the wire as needed so that it's snug and lays flat over the top of the kid's head without biting into it, then braid the kid's hair on the other side the exact same way.
8. Use a couple of bobby pins or sturdy clips to anchor the wire on each side of the kid's head above the braids, so that it doesn't inch down the back of the kid's head.

Now you should be able to bend each braid into whatever silly contortions you desire. 

After I did this, basically none of us ever stopped laughing at how hilarious the kids looked with braids sticking out all crazy--Will's long, thick hair made every pose look especially improbable. 

At the play, many of the kids were invited to sit on cushions right in front of the stage, and as soon as mine had settled themselves far enough away from me and Matt that I could no longer intervene, I noticed that Pippi hair does NOT keep to itself! Fortunately, the kids on either side of mine were buddies of theirs, buddies good enough that their parents would probably inform me if they got head lice. I'd rather have bent the kids' braids up and over their heads before they walked away, though--I can go the rest of my life without dealing with head lice ever again.

Will liked her braids okay, especially at first, but by the time we were home from the play, she was ready to take them out and move on with her afternoon. Syd, however, was ready to move on to...

a photo shoot:

She's currently making noise about wanting lots and LOTS of bendy braids for her runway walk at the Trashion/Refashion Show later this month. 

Pro: I think we could get away with using pipe cleaners instead of wire in each braid. 

Con: There's no way I'd ask a Hair Arts Academy student volunteering his/her services to put a million pipe cleaner braids into my child's hair, so there goes my pre-show morning!

This post was shared with Teach beside Me.

Listening to the Treebobs

For reading enrichment the other day, the girls listened to a set of Treebobs radio plays that they were given by the series' publicist. Radio plays are a whole different ballgame from audiobooks, and the girls, who already love audiobooks, were THRILLED by this one. There are sound effects, and different voices, and music--it's pretty exciting. The imagery is vivid, it's full of action, and each story is relatively short, so you could get through one in less than 20 minutes, IF your kid didn't insist on then listening to all the other stories next, like my kids always do.

It's a really different comprehension activity, too, to listen to a audio dramatization instead of an audiobook. When I asked the girls to tell me about the Treebobs, Sydney, who's normally a great narrator, had this to say:

"The Treebobs are about little fairies and Treebobs, and how witches sometimes do what they have to do."

However, when I asked each girl to illustrate one specific scene from the story we'd just listened to ("The Treebobs and the Dizzy Broomsticks") and then caption it, the results were much more sophisticated:

Isn't that interesting? It's clearly stretching a different part of their brains, to inspire such a different response from audiobooks.

Treebobs have been on HEAVY rotation ever since, beating out the girls' usual audiobook choices of fairy tales, Bunnicula, Tinkerbell stories, Thor's Wedding Day, and whatever other 25 audiobooks that we've got checked out of the library right now. I'm currently searching for more children's offerings in the audio dramatization genre, which is a tricky one to search for in our library's online catalog. We already like these guys--

--but surely there are more?

Improv Comedy Stars on The Friday Zone

Although Will has been a craft kid on The Friday Zone before, Syd has only recently become old enough to participate in taping our local PBS children's show. She was pretty thrilled, then, when the call came out for child actors comfortable doing improv comedy with a professional comedy troupe to tape some segments for the show.

So I dutifully signed both girls up--one an old hand at being filmed, the other a bright, eager newbie--and carted them over to The Friday Zone set. To entertain Sydney while Willow and I read as we waited (first lesson in taping a TV show: be prepared to wait), I gave her my camera. Here's what she captured:

Camera person with The Friday Zone set in the background. My girls were the only children who could not seem to sit still on those cubes on the set--darned little homeschoolers!

backstage--the video screen shows what the camera sees. It's what all the parents watch to see if the camera is getting a close-up of their kid.

Guess what I'm doing the entire time? 

lights setup, and the boom camera that all the kids were fascinated with

the set!!!

Do you ever have those times when you are really hyper-aware of your children's misbehavior? During this mega-taping (segments of eight different episodes, I think?), I thought that I was going to have a stroke. Mixed in with all of these nice, quiet, obedient children, my kids behaved like animals, I thought. They kicked the cubes they were supposed to be sitting on, they scooted off of them, they crouched on top of them, they fiddled with their necklaces, they gazed up at the boom mike when they were supposed to look like they were listening to the host--and the worst part is that they were being filmed at the time, so I couldn't march over there and hiss, "Straighten up!" at them!

Although it was miserable at the time, one of my friends, whose husband produces the show, later assured me that 1) the kids were fine; 2) when you work with children, your bar for misbehavior is set more along the lines of "Is the kid running around and knocking the set over?" than "Is the kid fiddling with her necklace?"; and 3) kids who are goofy at least make for better TV than kids who are frozen in fear.

That being said, of COURSE it was fine! At about 10:20 in the "Live, Learn, and Play" episode, the girls play living shadows with the Comedy Sportz improv troupe, and yes, it seems as if Sydney's goal in this skit is simply to torture the poor comedian assigned to her, and I think that possibly it actually was her goal, because she's mentioned several times since then how funny it was to NOT do what she was supposed to do, sigh. Will had a fabulous time, though, can you tell? At about 20:00 in the "Let's Eat" episode, you can watch them kick their cubes and play with their necklaces and fidget during the mad pizza-maker sketch.

There are still six more episodes, I think, containing the girls, yet to be aired this season. I'm most looking forward to the fairy tale news sketch, which is a Fox news-esque telling of the Rumplestiltskin tale, in which, if I recall correctly (I was trying to read AND send Sydney psychic instructions to stop falling off of her cube on purpose, remember), Willow plays the gold-spinning maiden.