Monday, June 23, 2014

Summer!!

My oldest daughter took off to music camp for the piano for a week in Utah. She flew by herself, my husband was able to get a gate pass to take her to the gate and her flight was non stop. She was a bit nervous, but she did great. She got to see some family and friends while she was there and she said she learned a lot at the camp. She started out worried because she felt like it was somewhat of a competition, but after some reminding of that it's OK and that she is there to learn and gain experience, she found her groove. She made some good friends and we didn't even hear from her for 2 days, phone issues, apparently. But I am very proud of her. She felt good about her performance at the end and she gets home tonight!! Yay!! This week we discovered our town beach at a smallish lake, it is so incredibly awesome. I could seriously just go there everyday and will for at least the next 2 weeks since my kids have swim lessons. So much fun. The older ones are participating on swim team. The sand is great and there are a lot of fish. My oldest son is pretty determined to catch one and is hounding us for a net. We also took the family camping with our ward (church). It was very nice and I'm glad to have such a nice support group. The kids had a fantastic time. We are still plugging along on our school stuff, but kind of took it easy this week with all the swimming and camping, somehow we are going to have to still get a few things done since we took so much time off to pack and move earlier in the year. I love summer!! It is just awesome to go outside all the time and I love the lake!! We aren't far from the ocean so I want to go there too!! Nature study!! We are also having fun with perplexors- logic puzzles and games. So uch to do and learn, so little time!!!

Saturday, June 14, 2014

A Bit on Teaching Kids Moral Reasoning, Logic and Relationships

This is from my husband, he really does find the greatest stuff and we are finally getting to implement some of these things, I'm really happy about it, here it is:

Here are a few things I've discovered that others might enjoy:

1. I've been reading some books about how to raise kids to not easily be indoctrinated by anything, political, religious, social, whatever. Something that stood out was the importance of teaching "moral reasoning" which is reasoning through your decisions about what to do and what is right. I bought the game Scruples (and the kid version) which is about what you would do when faced with certain scenarios of ethical dilemma. Most of the scenarios fall in the gray area and don't have an obvious right or wrong, so you have to do some "moral reasoning" to decide what you are going to do. Actually the game is guessing what your opponents will do. 

2. I got the kids some books of logic puzzles called Perplexors. There are different levels and different types. They are kind of like the questions you might see on the LSAT about there are thre people, with three colors of shirts, with three pets and they give you clues and you have to figure out which person has which color and which pet. That's just an example. The kids did a few and seemed to really like them. I think is is good for teaching logic before learning formal logic. 

3. #1 is going to fly to music camp by herself and be gone for over a week. I wanted to get her a prepaid Visa card to use for incidentals, ex regency, and just experience using cards for payment. It turns out there are a lot of prepaid cards but most require SSN, birthday, and address and you must be at least 18. However, I found that there are non-refillable MasterCard gift cards that have no fees except the initial purchase and they work immediately with no setup required. You can't get cash from an ATM and you can't use it online but you can do everything else. Initial fee is $5 and you have to fill them using cash. You can get them at Walmart.

4. I've been looking for a book ( or game, games are always better) on teaching what healthy relationships are, and which is geared to teens. There are a lot of books on healthy marriages and a lot of books on bad relationships of all types, but I was looking for something on what healthy relationships are. And not just romantics relationships, but between friends, with your boss, with a neighbor, with your parents, etc. I haven't really found anything that covers all that but I did find a good book on what it means to be a good friend. It's called "A Good Friend: How to Make One, How to be One" and it's geared towards teen. It's good for friend relationships but I'm still looking for the others. There are some good books on boundaries, but nothing yet on what healthy relationships are.