Learning with TV and Media

The kids were sick early this week so they spent a lot of time watching TV. They were, of course, watching good stuff like PBS, Veggie Tales, and The Magic School Bus. They learned a lot of stuff and I deep cleaned the kitchen so it was all good.

On Thursday we were all tired of TV and so they began playing their favorite game of "Pretend Breakfast" first thing after real breakfast. Pretend Breakfast is a very messy but fun game that they made up last year and still haven't tired of it. As far as I can figure out the game it goes like this: They line up all kinds of stuff up the stairs and all over the house and then move each thing down a certain number (they change the number every time - last time I noticed they had move in numbers that added up to six) of stairs until they get to the bottom of the stairs were that thing pretends to eat breakfast. Usually they use all the babies and stuffed animals they can find, but sometimes they get more creative. This particular time they were using CDs. I was not exactly excited about using CDs so I told them they couldn't use CDs and Robyn said, "We're just pretending." So I told them they would have to use pretend CDs then. Ever since that moment they have spent every waking moment possible to make pretend CDs out of cardstock. Making pretend CDs led to making pretend cassette tapes, which lead to pretend DVDs and then pretend videos. They used a shoe box to create a CD/cassette/video/DVD player and a little can as the video camera. They even turned their desk into a pretend computer with which to burn copies of the CDs and DVDs and to order them from pretend Amazon.com so the pretend post office could deliver them to the pretend houses.
What a great game! They are practicing their cutting skills (even cutting the holes in the middle!) in making the stuff and of course each movie or album needs a name so they are practicing their writing and spelling. After the title, each movie says by: Card Studios - because Colin noticed that Wiggles is by Lyric Studios and the kids are making their videos out of cardstock = Card Studios. Pretty creative, I think. It is very funny when they "watch" each movie because they act out the movie they are watching. Gracie's favorite is "Teeth and the Stinky Feet." Very funny! :)

We went to a violin workshop Saturday morning and they didn't want me to turn on any music in the car because they couldn't hear their pretend music from the shoe box if I did. Colin took the can with him and made "movies" of everything we did that day.
On our way home from the violin workshop, we discovered a free harvest party in our neighborhood with real live ponies. They did not advertise this party very well at all so we pretty much had the party to ourselves (we wouldn't have know about it ourselves had we not driven by). The kids loved riding the ponies over and over again. Colin got it all on "video", too bad it wasn't real video. We did get still photos of the kids on the ponies taken by the Realtors who are trying to sell the houses in our community. Gracie's pony neighed while she was on it - she thought that was hilarious! I thought Gracie was hilarious. They also had a hay bale maze that Colin and Robyn went through A LOT! Robyn was excited to tell Dad about the real live maze for people not just pencils.

Despite the illnesses, we had a great week with much learning taking place. Not to mention my fabulously dejunked kitchen!