Hey everyone, it’s Medicine Mondays again, but this really isn’t a Medicine Mondays post. Instead today was another Father Daughter Day.

Haircut, Pizza, and Orange Drink = Happiness

Father Daughter Day

As you guys know, I work kind of a weird schedule where I work 10 hour days for 8 days and then I’m off 6 days. The trade off is that I work every other weekend, but then I get some days off in the middle of the week. Normally I try to take my daughter out of preschool once in awhile for a father-daughter day. However, my daughter will be starting kindergarten in the fall, so I probably can’t be pulling her out of school anymore.

So today we had a little Father-Daughter day. I took her to get a haircut — she only wanted to get 1″ cut off.  Then we went to this pizza place she likes and we got some cheese pizza with an orange drink. After that we went to Starbucks so I could get some coffee and she got her Tall Ice Water.

She really loves to talk to anyone she meets. She’ll say hi to everyone and talk to anyone about anything. Ms. Congeniality I guess.

Anything else today?

Well, since I don’t want her to think I just pull her out of school to have fun only, we made her 2nd crypto video. This was pretty tough because the concepts (and words) are pretty difficult for her, so it took a lot of takes to get things right. However, overall she did pretty great. We took a few breaks in between cuts to give her a break. So she also watched a little bit of Wishenpoof and Cleo and Cuquin.

We tried to make another crypto video, but I think she was too worn out… so we just scrapped that for now.

Instead she decided to just go play on ABCMouse.com on her iPad…

Oh! How is ABCMouse.com?

To be honest, I’ve always been kind of skeptical of ABCMouse.com, but we decided to give it a shot.

Surprisingly, she actually really likes it.

It’s gotten a lot better since I first looked at back when Kylie was like 1 or 2 years old. They’ve really added a lot of elements to help the kids engage with learning. There is also the gamification of learning that they’ve really tried to do. The creation of “earning tickets” in order to get stuff is a good. Kylie loves the ability to customize her avatar with clothes and accessories, buy stuff for “her room”, buy new pets, and lots of other stuff. It really is good motivation for the kids to come back to the program over and over again.

Case in Point:

Kylie is trying to save 600 tickets to buy a pet unicorn… but she keeps using the tickets to buy other stuff she sees, like a tiara for example. I’ve talked to her about saving the 600 for the unicorn, or she’ll never get it… and she says she’s going to save now. The tiara was the “last one”. We’ll see if that’s true or not. However, if she is able to save, that’s another valuable lesson I think.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the program in terms of keeping the kids motivated to learn. However, the educational content itself could be a little more robust I think. That said, there is more to education than just the skills and book learning. For example, developing self-motivation and a strong work ethic is equally if not more important, in my opinion. My preliminary thoughts are that ABCMouse.com will help children develop those good habits early.

Transparency:

I have no affiliation with ABCMouse.com.

TL;DR

This post is basically just describing my day to explain why I didn’t write a Medicine Mondays post.

My daughter is growing up before my eyes. Life is short. Be Happy.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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