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Curing The Summer Blues
The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind at my house. Summer is truly upon us here in Chicago—and with it has come the heat and the anxious “Mom, I’m bored!
One of my favorite things about summer is the opportunity for so many mini hands-on learning experiences with my three kids. Summer tends to be a time when I can take the time to count with them and have them help me divide up snacks (“If we have fifteen baby carrot sticks, how many do each of you get to munch on?”) and sort produce when we get home from the grocery store (“Let’s put the fruits in this bowl and the veggies in another.”). The best thing you can do for your kids this summer is to keep their minds active.
Take a walk with your kids, and let them take turns with a digital camera—invite them to take pictures of the prettiest leaf they can find, or the cloud that looks the most like an animal. Have them take silly pictures of each other. Giving them a chance to see summer from another view (or lens) can be a great memory-maker.
Another great memory-making opportunity is visiting a farm that lets you pick your own fruit (check out www.pickyourown.org to find a farm close to you). This gives kids some insight into how fruit grows, which fruits are ripe to pick, and reminds them that the grocery store doesn’t make everything in it. This can be an easy learning experience for kids, and one that’s fairly inexpensive—plus your kids may be more apt to try some new fruits they’ve picked themselves!
What are some of your favorite summer learning opportunities? Share them below, so we can share them with our kids!
Comments on this Entry
Kim, this comment has to do with your Twitter feed. I apologize for using your blog, but my response is too long for Twitter.
“If content is king, how come nobody wants to pay for it?”
I believe that there are two factors that contribute to why this is the case.
1) When the Internet was first created, it was mainly used for leisure activities. People talked about things like TV shows, games, and recipes. Blogs were individual personal journals. Using the Internet was an activity that was fun, not something that was yet a part of standard business practice. It was also referred to as the World Wide Web, a name that has the connotation that it belongs to everyone in the world. When businesses and corporations began to have a presence on the Web, I think that many assumed that they were choosing to join this radically new technology because businesses are part of the world, not that businesses would try and change that world in order to profit from it. I think that any business will always have to contend with the notion that the Internet began as a very open experience. Any attempt to restrict that is likely to be met with resistance because change of any sort is often not popular.
2) Publishers are having the same difficulty that musical artists are having with the Web. We’ve paid for numerous types of content for years, but that content has always been packaged in a physical entity. In the past, an educational publisher would publish a textbook or a set of reproducibles. That content was packaged in a tangible object that had pages, a cover, and a spine. An individual could touch it. Therefore, it made sense to have to pay for it because physical resources like paper were needed to produce the packaging. CDs work the same way. The ideas and the content are pressed into a physical disk that’s wrapped in plastic. A download from iTunes can’t be touched or held in the same way that a CD can, so it becomes more abstract instead of concrete. It’s similar to why some elementary students have difficulties grasping mathematical concepts unless they use manipulatives. They can’t see the process unless it becomes a tangible object. Otherwise, they can’t understand why they need to bother with it. It’s easier to understand and appreciate the process of creating a textbook when you can turn the pages of that book.
As digital and “wired” as our society is becoming, I don’t believe that we are yet to the point where everyone can live exclusively in the world of the abstract. Publishers will likely have to operate in both worlds, such as offering an access code certificate or printed booklet that goes along with the digital material that’s on the screen. Some may find that to be antiquated and not need it or use it, but it may be the key to getting others to understand the value of the content---and be willing to pay for it.
By Andrea on 2009 07 07
Andrea, thanks for your thorough and well composed thoughts. I agree on many fronts with you. I think the printed ancillary product comes in handy as a premium value consumers will want to pay for. Let’s keep our minds open and our eyes on this development.
By Kim Kleeman on 2009 07 13
