Teaching My Son Innovation at Burger King

So I was sitting at Burger King writing while my son was enjoying a kid’s meal and playing in the play area. He was delighted because his meal came with a cool Monster Truck! After a while, he noticed that there were two more Monster Trucks under the play area that had apparently rolled there. We discussed how some poor kids apparently lost their toys and probably left in tears. Luke said he wished we could retrieve them, but they were impossible to reach. One of them was extremely far away, and the other had broken into the two pieces it originally came in, wheel base and top shell. The space under the play area was locked and only accessible by an employee. I said to him,“They are only impossible to get if you lack the will to accept the challenge and the ability to use the resources at your disposal.” Luke said,“Huh?” I replied,“Do you know what a challenge is? It’s when you decide to attempt something that appears impossible, using what you already have. Let see what we have available to us and try to get those Monster Trucks! The worst that can happen is that we’ll fail.”…

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Dr. Seuss’ Bible

In Dad School, I’m in a process of teaching my son both how to read and to understand how we got the Bible. One recent trip I purchased Dr. Seuss’ “The BIG Green Book of Beginner Books” and my five year old is loving the funny stories it contains that originally were published books in their own right, but now, are compiled in this single thick green book. Since we are currently practicing pointing out the letters of words and sounding them out, I decided the title of the book would be our goal last night since it provided a review of “BIG” (he just learned that a few days ago in Go, Dog Go!”) and a review of plural with the occurrence of “Book” and “Books” both being in the title. Then it struck me! Here I was helping him sound out a “Book of Books” which is exactly what the Bible is! The cover even shows little pictures of the “books within this book!” My heart skipped a beat! I had to force myself to hold off on the spiritual application and stick to the reading lesson first. But once he had mastered the title, I first explained…

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Dad School – In the Snow?

CONTEST UPDATE AT END OF POST Today it was pretty cold… and snowy, and when it came time for Dad School, I could tell my son would rather be outside playing in the snow than working on his alphabet. So what’s a Dad to do? Combine School and Snow together, of course! I had to shovel the driveway eventually today anyway – might as well use it as an educational opportunity, and as I like to say, “Kill two stones with one bird!” We bundled up and headed outside and worked on our letters, in the snow. Granted, we wouldn’t last long in the cold – but we had a great time. (My back might argue that last statement!) (Contest is over, but it was FUN!) Can you name the letters we worked on today? See how many of the letters you can name in COMMENTS. First person to name ALL FOUR correctly, WINS! Letter 1: Letter 2: Letter 3: Letter 4: NAME ALL FOUR LETTERS in Comments… you just might get a PRIZE! CONTEST UPDATE: This was a blast! (and quite crazy!) I had no idea I would get such a response, and it was very confusing to go…

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Dad School – Day One

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve founded a new school with only one student and I’m calling it Dad School! I’ve appreciated the feedback and advice I’ve gotten on facebook, comments and e-mail! Thanks! Day One is in the can and Luke seemed to really enjoy it a lot. The challenge was that I wanted to do an assessment on day one so I’d have both something to measure progress with – and even evaluate my own effectiveness, but how do you start out with “testing” and have your boy want to do Day Two?! LOL I decided to take an interest of his, cars and parking lots (he absolutely LOVES parking lots, and has mommy make him a new one nearly every day!) and use it as a review tool to see which letters and numbers he can recognize. He loved it and didn’t even know it was a test! By the time we got through all the letters and numbers 1-20 I had a record of which he knew and have my assignment of what will be focus on in the weeks ahead. Here is what the “test paper” looked like when we were done: Shhhh, Luke doesn’t know…

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