Well, our first month has come and gone. We experienced most items on the board and a few we’ll have to come back to later. One recent highlight was making Strawberry Shortcakes from America’s Test Kitchen Kids. This recipe was listed as “advanced” and most young kids would find it difficult to do on their own. So we did it together and he learned some introductory baking lessons. My sweetest moment was when he asked me who taught me to bake and I told him “my Mom, just like I’m teaching you”. For him the sweetest moment was eating the fruits of his labor.
We had a few other fun discoveries in the past weeks… Crash Course Kids is a great way to break up tablet usage. After a couple toy unboxing and/or lego speed-building videos, it’s time to learn some science! We also have been successfully using the bubble challenge and freeze dance self-regulation games to exercise body control. And I personally like The Past and the Curious at bedtime. While he seems to nod off fairly quickly into the episodes and might miss some of the content, I’m not sure that’s an actual problem if it helps him get to sleep 😉
In addition, my kid was super excited to create the Giving, Saving, Spending banks and really wanted to decorate them as “monsters”. We found fun construction paper designs on “Teachers Pay Teachers” and attempted our own versions without the templates, though if I were doing this with a large group of kids, the downloads would be handy.
Lastly, I want to share our experience with Storynory. As mentioned in the original write-up, we enjoy listening to their Herodotus series. I like how it very transparently brings together historical texts, ancient mythology and concepts from modern cultures and religions. “Bertie”, the narrator, provides various viewpoints on a topic and then asks the kid listeners to draw their own conclusions. Like could Arion really have been saved by dolphins? Be aware that some episodes discuss battles and tragedies, so it may not be for every kid (especially younger ones), but for us it spawned a bunch of interesting conversations.
I really, really, really wanted to love the other stories. Unfortunately, we found the fiction less compelling, despite wonderful narrations from actors that seem to be Shakespearean trained. My child was especially fond of Richard’s voice – check out How Love and Peace Came to the Woods, a cheeky take on an Aesop’s fable. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I didn’t enjoy Storynory’s other content as much. Part of it was that some stories seemed geared to older kids and some stories felt a little dated. We’ll definitely come back for future installments of Herodotus, if they are produced, but since my kid didn’t find a story series that spoke to him in the same way, we plan to check out other story podcasts for a bit.