Tag Archives: play

Boys, mom of boys, musings, Parenting, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Watching A Phenomenal Amount of Youtube (Mom of Boys)

Leave a comment

I remember shortly after my boys were born that a mom friend advised me to try to join my children in their play. We were already an active family that loved to cross country ski, walk the dog, eat together, read together and play board games together. This very sage mom friend who was a few years ahead of me was very wise in her advice as she knew what was coming:

Technology.

Screens.

Computer games.

Movies.

Minecraft.

And yes, “Youtube”.

I am very grateful that I learned a long time ago, when the boys were little, to try to always join them in their “play”. It’s been a truly and very fun unexpected journey.

Our current favourite Youtube channels are:

Mark Rober = An engineer who used to work for Nasa and Apple. You may have heard about the backyard squirrel maze or glitter bombs. If you haven’t definitely check him out.

Dude Perfect = A group of five Christian men who met in University and now do trick shots and short skits. We did a “Dude Perfect” birthday for our oldest 16th birthday this year. It was a hit!

Jet Lag, the Game = This is a group of three young men who play real life “board games” around the world. We support and watch them on the streaming platform Nebula and always watch the new shows together. *Some swearing and one of the young men often gets drunk as part of the game.

Fidias = We got hooked when Fidias was trying to get a hug from Elon Musk. It is interesting to see what he comes up with and how positive he is.

Mr. Beast = I am sure everyone knows about Mr. Beast and his huge budgets for making videos. He is a young man who has a passion for creating and has been blessed by this creativity. He has so many channels and the main one is good, but there are some videos we don’t watch. The boys are excited to try his chocolate bar: Feastables.

Max Fosh = This is a new favourite from England because of his wacky ideas – sneaking into things, “Welcome to Luten” sign, buying a traffic circle… He’s light and fun!

On top of these channels, all of our boys have started their own Youtube channels following their passions. Their work is my ABSOLUTE favourite as I watch them film and edit these pieces of art sharing from their heart.

OC (11 years old) = Our youngest loves Lego and doing creative custom builds. Here are some of his amazing creations at “Brick of Lego”: https://www.youtube.com/@BrickofLego

CC (14 years old) = Our middle guy thoroughly enjoys talking and sharing his love of cars! He’s got a channel called C Cars that he started many years ago and has recently started adding to: https://www.youtube.com/@CcarsYT

JC (16 years old) = Our oldest doing what he loves most, flipping! jcanflip is his channel and he flips for every subscriber he gets and posts nightly at around 10:00pm PST. https://www.youtube.com/@Jcanflip

What are your current favourite Youtube channels? Please share as we love adding to the things that we can watch together as a family.

Have a funday Sunday folks and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

Book, Boys, gymnastics, mindset, mom of boys, Parenting

Be Writing a Letter to Trampoline and Artistic Gymnastic Parents (April 16th, 2023)

2 Comments

It’s been an incredibly busy season for athletes involved in trampoline and artistic gymnastics. From February til now there have been many competitions. Since February Family Day weekend there have been three major competitions for our oldest son. The highlight was two weeks ago at Provincials where he achieved his goals for this season by moving up, aka mobilizing, into the National levels in all three events: trampoline, Double-mini trampoline and tumbling. He also achieved fifth all around for both male and female athletes in British Columbia in the national level. WAHOO! This young man will now represent British Columbia at Nationals in July.

This letter is being crafted to all the parents of these hardworking athletes, including myself, who have achieved their goals in months, years or failed to reached them by a score of 0.1. Yes, this sport is won and lost on very fine margins. I am throwing out some advice from my background in Kinesiology today and topping it off with some insight from Education.

Please give your child a week or two or even a month where scores or wins/losses don’t come into account.

Read to them or have them read to themselves, if they don’t see it as a chore. You could even buy them a copy of their favourite graphic novel.

Put out some clay, play dough or slime for them to play or create with.

Do a puzzle together.

Have a kitchen dance party and play their favourite music.

Draw together. They could draw what they feel or what they see. We love the Art for Kids Hub Youtube channel as you can find almost anything you would like to draw with helpful video lessons that are geared for kids. Even I can follow these directions! It’s so fun!

Go for a hike in nature together. This is our favourite and we try to do this weekly throughout all seasons of the year.

Build something together – Do you have Lego? How about the project you have always been wanting to build together in the garage?

Last but not least, why not embrace an old classic and play the cloud game. Sit on your backs in the grass and look for pictures in the clouds?

And that’s it folks! I hope that these amazing gymnasts that compete with such incredible intensity can steal from this list to calm their nervous systems and create a body and mind that can compete for years and years to come. What an incredible sport. We put out children in gymnastics at 18 months to build physical literacy. We never thought nor imagined that we would be fortunate to have a gymnast in the family. What a fun and exciting new sport to learn about and ponder today post-competition.

Have a marvellous Monday everyone and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

Boys, Family, Grief

Be Playing in Puddles

Leave a comment

We had a novel January experience this afternoon – playing in puddles. Where is all the snow?

Auntie H (Sexy Neck’s cousin) offered to help out and she did.

Talk and tea with me.

Play and puddles with the boys.

She shed some tears with me and strapped on the gumboots!

Who can ask for anything more?

20140113-200500.jpg

20140113-200505.jpg

20140113-200513.jpg

20140113-200518.jpg
We got wet! And cold…

Auntie H had to ride CC’s scooter home.

20140113-200555.jpg

20140113-200601.jpg
We even met some ducks.

20140113-200626.jpg

Quack quack!

Squish squish!

Brrrrr….

Uncategorized

Be Board

4 Comments

Sexy Neck has a whole lot of wood around the outside of the house – in his shop, down the side of the fence, under the addition.  

Today the boys wanted to have a pajama day.  This involved staying home in our pajamas.  There was no sleeping to be done though.  

The boys took two pieces of boards that were lying along the fence and decided to run, jump, climb along them at various angles and speeds.  Strap yourselves in, here we go:

ImageImageImage

With one giant jump from JC, the board broke in half.  This started a whole different type of play.  

Image

In my life as a mother, I am never bored!

Boys, Family, Parenting

Be A Snow Lover

Leave a comment

Hahahaha… I laughed out loud this morning when I looked out the window.

Last night at 6pm, we have friends over to play in the backyard in the sandbox and tree fort(sans mitts, snow pants, boots…).

Twelve hours later we have this:

20130312-074028.jpg

Hmmm, time to get the snow shovels out again.

God, I love you. Snow is an incredibly powerful, purifying symbol. Thanks for the reminder (and the laughs!)

Off to play in the snow (and encourage some very depressed neighbours!)

Here’s what we ended up making today:

20130312-212622.jpg