The Fairly Odd Mother

Our first days in Massachusetts’ new virtual public school

December 16, 2010

Christmas in December!

Look what arrived on Monday:

Inside these boxes is our new curriculum. We are officially now part of MAVA, the new virtual public school in Massachusetts.

(well, at least the girls are. My son, D, is still a free-flowing, hippy homeschooling kindergartner)

We’ve plunged right in which is why you haven’t seen anything new on this blog all week. Holy crow, there is a lot to figure out, though I’ve had enough people say TAKE IT SLOW that I get it.

Take it slow.

But, ZOMG, look at all of this? I’m part giddy with excitement and faint from fear.

But thank goodness for my friend Miriam who is a few months ahead in this journey and has answered my desperate, need-an-answer-right-now questions like, CAN WE WRITE IN THESE BOOKS?!?!?!?!?! (her voice-of-reason answer? yes, most of the materials are consumable and here is where you could’ve found out the answer for yourself before you wrung your hands for an hour).

The best was last night when I told her about my hatred of Study Island, a standardized test-prep program, where new math concepts were being thrown at my girls in multiple-question format and threatening to sink our floundering ship. She looked concerned and asked, did they watch the lesson first?

Lesson? There is a lesson? Somehow, without a smirk or an eyeroll, she dragged me over to our friend’s computer and pulled up the program to show me where “Lesson” clearly was stated next to the test area.

So, that has been my week in a nutshell: Moments of Oh My God I Can’t Find Anything How Can They Expect Me To Do This I Don’t Have All The Materials followed by oh. it’s right there.

We’ve also “met” our teacher on the phone and in virtual classrooms, and we all like her. She is thankfully also the same teacher that my friends have, so the kids can “wave” to each other when they are in the same class.

I’ll try to chronicle some of our new homeschooling journey here even though some people may not exactly call this homeschooling. But, to me, this doesn’t feel all that different from what we’ve been doing for the past four years except we have more of a schedule now and some online classes to attend (though almost everything is flexible). I’ll let you know if at some point I really feel like we have entered Public School Land.

Maybe it’s when we get the School Lunch requirements. Heh.

Filed Under: Fairly Odd Kids, Fairly Odd Me, Homeschooling, MAVA 11 Comments

Travel in Time with Raving Rabbids and snag a copy for yourself

December 13, 2010

Last Christmas, our friends gave us a Raving Rabbids game for the Wii and I eyed it suspiciously. It looked kind of ridiculous, promised to be too loud, and seemed a bit juvenile.

Is it any surprise we liked it?

So now the kind people of Ubisoft have sent me a copy of the newest in the “Rabbid” family: Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time. And for those of you who love ridiculous, loud and juvenile like we do, I think you’ll dig this new game.

First, to explain: The Rabbids are pretty much rabbits, albeit with big googly eyes, loads of attitude and lots of sound effects. And in Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time, the Rabbids are using a washing machine to travel back and forth in time.

Like most video games, I have to be upfront and say I understand very little of the overall objective, which drives my kids crazy. I will run around in circles for ten minutes until one says, “Mom! You are missing the big clue RIGHT THERE”, and I’ll realize I was supposed to scoop up the blinking gem or do some other important thing. So, although I played this game for a while, don’t turn to me for indepth commentary on the main objectives.

And, as a rule-follower, it took me a little while to realize that whenever a warning came on the screen to say “do not push A to scream” or “do not smash”, the point is to DO those things in order to progress through the game. This game will make a sick-to-death-of-rules tween very happy especially if they also giggle uncontrollably over fart noises.

No, highbrow this is not, but I sure had fun stretching my “wings” and flying through space. And I also stretched my brain a bit in a quiz where I was asked questions about history, the game itself and video games in general. Let’s not talk about how I did.

I do wish the transition between the “minigames” was a little quicker since I’m very impatient with anything computerized. And there is only so long anyone of us can handle the Rabbids level of energy. Toddlers and younger kids will definitely become frustrated, and since many of the instructions pop up on screen in small letters, readers with decent eyesight will get the most out of this game.

But my kids call it “cool” even though some of the game is beyond their ability. And they definitely think the farting noises are hilarious.

WANT TO WIN A COPY? If you’d like to win a copy of Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time, please leave a comment below before 5pm on Wednesday, December 15 naming one of the costumes your Rabbid can be customized to wear (see Amazon listing). I’ll pick a winner at random. Contest is open to Continental U.S. residents only.

CONTEST IS CLOSED! Congratulations to Janice (commenter #11) who was selected at random. Thanks to everyone for commenting!

Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time is available at Amazon or Toys-R-Us. It is rated 10+ for alcohol reference, crude humor and mild cartoon violence.

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While Ubisoft sponsored this review, the opinions I’ve expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint. Thanks to Ubisoft and Clever Girls Collective. I promote Blog with Integrity.

Filed Under: giveaway 13 Comments

Holidays captured

December 11, 2010

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday of the year. I love Christmas cookies, eggnog (now in latte form), twinkling lights, buying gifts, opening cards from far-away friends. . .all of it. Even the year my husband lost his job a month before the holidays, when we had to cut waaaaay back on our gift-giving, I still loved it.

And even though I lost my dad almost six years ago just a few days shy of Christmas, at least this is such a time of reflection and family, I always have time to sit by the tree, look at the lights and think about all he did for us.

But, it’s hard, isn’t it? Hard to keep up the energy required to be a parent at Christmas. It’s the shopping that mostly gets me down—-not the actual picking out of gifts (which I love to do), but the barrage of ads, the midnight sales, the “what do they want?” questions from everyone.

The tick-tick-tick in my head makes me wake with a stomachache and sweaty palms most mornings. I recently wrote on Facebook: Confession: I’m so not in the Christmas spirit this year. It’s usually my favorite holiday, but I’m not feeling it this year.

I can’t change the commercialism or the ticking clock, but I did sign up for another photography journaling class—this one aptly named Picture the Holidays.

And, strangely, it’s working. Looking at the holidays from behind the lens of my little point-and-shoot, reminding myself to: Stop, Hold Still and Just Look, is working.