Image via Instagram – @socamom
My three little moths… always drawn to “the Glow”…
Them: May I hold your phone, please Mommy?
Me: No.
Them: What about your tablet?
Me: No.
Them: Did you bring your laptop?
Me: Yes.
Them: Can I use it, please?
Me: No.
This is how the conversation always goes, so I have no idea why they even ask me anymore. I have no games on my phone or tablet, so they are no fun at all – this is totally on purpose – but they still ask. It is like kids these days can’t survive without “the Glow”. Kids are plugged in from the time they can sit up, sometimes earlier, and in many cases, that’s not a terrible thing.
For families like ours whose visits to see family members are few and far between for various reasons (distance, cost, time), the technology allows us to come face to face with them more often than we would if we didn’t have things like Skype and Google Hangout. Facebook makes me feel like I see my cousins all the time, when in fact I rarely do.
Even though the technology pulls us closer to our family around the world, we do step back from technology when we can to spend time with each other.
As a homeschooling family, we spend a lot of time in the car on the way to music lessons, enrichment activities, and field trips. My kids don’t have iPads or their own tablets, so we have to find other ways to keep them from annoying one another… and eventually annoying me. Here are five things that we do to keep the kids minds moving while we are on the move.
1. Flash cards – True story. I STILL don’t know my multiplication facts. I have all sorts of tricks, but are the memorized? Nope. I am starting to think I am too old to learn. My middle son is (as I was told) a “reluctant learner”, so I have been tempted to teach him all my tricks instead of making him memorize them. We have flash cards that the kids use in the car to quiz one another, and he is almost done memorizing them… painlessly. Baby girl enjoys making the “aaaaaaaaaa” buzzer sound when he gets it wrong, and he loves impressing his dad with his “12 times”. Everyone wins.
2. Old School Music – We take it all the way back to the 50’s and up to the 90’s when we say “old school”.
So I started…”I wanna rock right now…” The boy answers… “I’m Rob Base and I came to get down.” My job is done. #dropsmic @Robbasemusic
— Eva Loves (@WhatEvaLoves) January 29, 2014
The kids sing just about anything from Belinda Carlisle to the Bee Gees… Byron Lee soca covers to Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. They have a near encyclopedic knowledge of Motown greats, and have almost learned all the words to Double Dutch bus. We’ll call that music appreciation.
3. Silly “I Spy” – I spy, with my little eye… a purple hippopotamus in a straw hat doing the worm! I’m pretty sure that teaches creativity or something – but really, it is just fun, and usually ends in one of them spying something that farted. Nice.
4. Mommy Can’t Sing – I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. So the kids pick songs for me to sing, and I belt it out in my BEST, WORST voice. They fall out laughing every time. Each time I say I’ll do better, clear my throat, maybe drink some water… do some ‘do-ra-me-fa-so-lalalalalalalala…..’ and then I belt it out again – even worse than the last time. They find it funny each and every time. I love hearing them laugh.
5. Read until you get sick – I used to hate when my mom would tell me to pack up my books for a long trip. I’d take out a book to read, and before we got to the interstate, my mouth was watery and I was ready to pass out… Mine read right up until “I don’t feel so good” and then they take a break, sleep it off, and start back again. It is a vicious cycle, but the conversations we have in between the reading and retching are worth the queasy belly.
So that’s what we do! What do they do to those tablets, phones, and things so that they can stare at them for hours, read, play games, and text, but never get motion sickness? Must be something about “the Glow”.
What do you do to keep the kids engaged without “the Glow” when you are in the car?
