This futuristic statue is recognizable to any Disney park fan.
Week 37 – Finding Nemo Results
Virtual school was a little rough this week, although it wasn’t Dragon’s fault. The other kids kept turning on their microphones without permission and both teachers sounded like robots. Dragon had a bit of sensory overload from all the noise and it made it hard for her to concentrate. They worked on syllables that started with “N” today, with Dragon seemed to enjoy.
After recess, they continued with the N syllables game.
After lunch, they talked about the difference between possible and impossible, and were asked to come up with sentences describing one of them. Dragon said that it is impossible for 1+3 to equal 2.
She also presented her paper boat that she made last week. She needs to practice speaking louder. But she said “bateau de papier” and tried to answer the questions.
Homeschooling went well this week.
Dance
She did ballet 2 times this week.
Music
Piano: she practiced her finger exercises every day this week. Lesson: Finger exercises are going extremely well. They worked on the Frogs and her timing is getting better. The Raindrops got all the notes no problem, a little trouble with the timing. Then she played the Bells and it was perfect, timing and notes. Kittens, got the notes but not the timing. And then they did chop sticks and she’s doing well.
We have a French playlist that I can play through the Google mini, with a variety of artists. Dragon has mentioned that she really likes Coeur de Pirate. So do I.
Crochet
We did not do any crochet this week.
Basic Information
We are working on yesterday (hier) and tomorrow (demain) around any given day. The months of the year is going well. We’re working on the month before and after any given month. That’s coming slowly.
The saisons de l’année are all memorized. We’re working on how each of them feel and the types of things we can do during each of them.
When I ask her “combien” for any of the above, she responds in complete sentences.
Printing words
Printing went very well this week. She drew a picture on the last page of three people swimming with jellyfish. They are all very happy.
Counting objects/math-type activities
She had no problems with the counting worksheet. We counted by 10s to 100 and counted up to 50. We also played dominos.
Math was interesting. She resisted trying to do it my way a couple of times, but then it clicked. Either that, or she recognized the pattern…
Storytime
We read stories from the teacher’s outline that was sent to us on Monday. She enjoyed that, and we will continue to do it next week.
We watched Raiponce in French on Disney Plus, one episode a day. Dragon is enjoying it immensely, and is even recognizing some words!
Activity
Make fish and chips – Dragon and her papa followed our recipe for beer-battered fish and chips. They also made zucchini sticks. I think they were the best that has ever been made in our house.
She loved it. This is her “my mouth is full and I’m trying to smile without getting fish everywhere” face.
Learn about sustainability in fishing – Dragon enjoyed watching the videos, but she said that she didn’t understand much. After talking about it with her, she seems to have understood the basics.
Learn about shipwrecks – She was fascinated by the idea that there were whole ships under the water. She wanted to see a pirate ship.
Virtual NerdCon Buck-A-Thon!
Hello Con Deprived People,
We’re going to be doing Virtual NerdCon again. It’s an online convention in a 3D game-like environment. Lots of fun and really cool.
This time it’s July 10th and all ticket sales go towards helping Native Women in the community through the charity Native Womens Wilderness.
Virtual Nerdcon is a nerdy convention hosted in an ACTUAL virtual world! You can customize your avatar, make friends, and shop from actual booths! It has all of your favourite nerdy hobbies and interests for you to shop from AND you can support small businesses! Best part is, you technically don’t even have to get out of bed!
Date: July 10th
Time: 10am – 5pm EST
Price: $1 CAD/ticket
Thank you and Stay Safe.
Éric
Monsters, Inc. – JenEric Movie Review
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2001 Monsters, Inc.
Story
Behind a cutesy story there’s a lot of great messages and social commentary. I’m a huge fan of the moment Sully realizes that what he’s always been told was the right thing to do actually hurt people. That moment was extremely relatable. The subtext of child labour, exploitation of others, and being a good person doesn’t mean you always do good things, are still very powerful.
Score: 1
Characters
A little bit of an odd couple, but with a great friendship, Sully and Mike are the heart of the movie. They are genuinely nice people who’ve been socialized to do bad things. It’s a wonderful dichotomy. The rest of the cast are a little less nuanced, but show different aspects of how this society molds people.
Score: 1
Dialogue
Every time I watch this movie I’m shocked by the amount of things in it that I’ve integrated into my everyday. From “Put that thing back where you found it or so help me” to “Follow the sultry sounds of my voice.”
The wonderful thing about the dialogue is that most of it does double or triple duty; humour, character development, and world building.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
At now 20 years old, the 3D rendering does look dated. Especially compared to newer Disney or Pixar. That being said, the hair particles and snow are stunning. The character design is well balanced between creepy and funny. Even dated, it looks great and the attention to detail is amazing.
Score: 1
Fun
This is the hardest category to judge. I watched this one in theatres and it’s a staple in our house. My daughter was glued to the screen when she was younger and she was still glued this time. My son sat and watched the entire time, although he was pretty freaked out at the beginning. He loved Boo and kept asking for her when she wasn’t on screen.
Score: 1
Overall
A classic film with all the heart and levels that Pixar is so great at. Its warmth and humour make it a joy to watch. Even twenty years after, the hair and snow animations are amazing. I’ll be honest, I’m not objective since this is one of my top ten movies of all time.
Final Score: 5*
*A 5 star review doesn’t mean the movie was perfect nor that it is perfect for everyone but it is a movie I believe is as close to perfect as possible.
I Tried a Meal Kit Delivery Service and I Wasn’t Impressed
Hello My Imaginary Friends,
I had grand plans on making this a series where I tried a bunch of meal kits and gave you my honest review of each. I even had a grading system and everything planned out.
Then I tried one and decided I didn’t have the time, energy, or will to do more than one.
I was not paid to do this review and will not include any links. I am an experienced home cook who’s been cooking for over twenty years and have a very well stocked kitchen.
Chef’s Plate Meal Kit Review
I got a massive discount on trying this and decided to give it 2 boxes. So far I’ve only done 1 box which was 2 separate meals.
The box was outside in the heat for more time than I’d like but none of the ingredients suffered.
Portions
The portions for both the Thai Fried Rice and the BBQ Salmon were impressive. It’s equivalent to what you’d get in a restaurant. We made the mistake of ordering the 4 person portion and the kids did not eat enough to make it worth it.
Score: 20/20
Level of Complexity
This isn’t for your absolute beginner. The instructions are simple, but the tools and timing needed are harder to master. Not to mention that nothing is defined.
If you get this and you don’t have a well stocked kitchen, you’ll be running out to get tools or pans.
I’d also say that they use way too many pans. The Thai Fried Rice had 4 pans in the instructions. I used my rice cooker for the rice and 1 pan for the rest. Same thing for the BBQ salmon. It needed 3 pans and the BBQ.
One piece of equipment that they do not mention in the instructions that I found invaluable was a good pair of scissors. EVERYTHING is packaged in these tiny little bags that are practically impenetrable. Wasteful and annoying.
Finally my biggest complaint was that it wasn’t formatted like a recipe. I would have been fine with it if there had been more detail, but this is not something you give or use if you don’t already know how to cook.
My entire family has some interesting allergies and I was downright angry that all the ingredients were not published in the kit. I took the chance on me and my wife since they rarely add chocolate to a spice mix, but I couldn’t have served this to my in-laws. I also skipped the Mediterranean spices in case it would affect my wife.
I repeat; none of the spice mixes or sauces had ingredient lists.
Score: 5/20
Quality
I was not impressed with the quality of the produce, but the meat was nice. The overall product wasn’t bad and I’d say it was a decent quality meal.
The packaging was a pain from start to finish though.
Score: 10/20
Taste
This should be the most important category. When it comes to cooking for kids, it isn’t always, unfortunately.
Either way, the Fried rice and the Salmon were good in the sense that I didn’t hate them. My daughter gave the Fried rice a thumbs up but didn’t finish her plate and refused leftovers the next day.
My son loved the roasted red peppers and zucchini, but that was literally all he’d eat. My wife seemed moderately pleased which is not her default for my cooking.
I would have been better off going to pick up Thai Express or just cooking myself.
Score: 10/20
Fun
I was hoping this would work out to be a fun activity. I had an image of sitting around the laptop deciding on the meals and everyone getting excited. Big NOPE there. Choosing the meals was exactly like meal planning. No one agreed or no one cared.
I was also hoping to get an Ikea Effect from the meal. I did not. I was mostly annoyed and swearing at the instructions for making more dishes to clean then needed.
I did like the colour and that the meals looked like their pictures.
Score: 10/20
Overall
This wasn’t a terrible experience, but it wasn’t a lot of fun. I don’t find it saved much time and at full price with shipping it will cost more than a quick restaurant.
I wanted this to not need to stress about meal planning and prep. Unfortunately, it didn’t help and added an extra frustration in the prep. This is great for those who can’t prep or shop for themselves, but not my thing.
Final Score: 55/100
Final Words
The experience told me that what I need is to find better delivery options that are local. This wasn’t for me and no one was all that happy about it.
What I’ll remember most (other than those annoying bags) is my almost two year old saying, “Couscous” over and over again.
Stay Safe and be kind,
Éric
Week 38 – Curious George
Although there is a father-son relationship in this, the reason I chose this movie is for the relationship between the man in the yellow hat and George. It’s so sweet.
Here is the link for the downloadable materials. (Please let me know if you have any problems so I can fix it!)
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| Watch movie | painting | make crown | bake with bananas | Flex |
Summary of the week
Daily details:
Dance
Ballet and martial arts on alternate days
Music
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano
Crochet
The project she is working on (currently she is making herself a poncho)
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. You can find the print-outs here.
Printing words
In download materials
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type – in download materials
Addition and pattern – worksheet in download materials
Storytime
Activity
Painting – finger painting
Make crown – link to reference
Bake with bananas – link to recipes for banana bread, muffins, and cupcakes
Next week – Beauty and the Beast
Week 36 – How to Train Your Dragon Results
Virtual school went well this week. Dragon sang along with all the songs and answered the questions about what day and month it is.
They learned syllables, and Dragon wrote them down on a paper with the rest of the students.
After recess, Dragon was taken aside to do her evaulation. She was shown a picture with a bunch of different objects and asked to identify things with the letters D, C, and G. She got the D ones with no problem (mostly because two of them were the same in English as in French, and one was the number 2), but she needed help with the others. Then she was shown the letters of the alphabet and asked to tell their names. She decided to give their sounds instead, which I think was a good thing? I don’t know, I feel like that’s harder. If she didn’t know their sound (Q, X, Y), she said their name. Then she was asked to count as high as she could. She quickly counted up to 29 and then said she didn’t want to continue. Then she counted to 100 by 10s without prompting, impressing the teacher. So I think it went well. She definitely needs to learn more French words.
After lunch, they did some true/false flash cards. I don’t think Dragon understood at first, but she seemed to catch on by the end. It helped that there were images.
Then they played with a block-based animation coding program called Scratch. Dragon had a lot of fun playing around with it.
Homeschool went well this week.
Dance
She did ballet 2 times this week.
Music
Piano: she practiced her finger exercises every day this week. Lesson: Finger exercises are going very well, very impressed with how much she’s improving each week. Even the new one is going well. They did the frog song and she did well. The raindrops song went well as well (also, she added some thunder lol). After some unfocussed time, she did the kitten song with very few issues (she’s only done it once before). Then they played chopsticks and she’s doing well.
We have a French playlist that I can play through the Google mini, with a variety of artists.
Crochet
We did not do any crochet this week.
Basic Information
We are working on yesterday (hier) and tomorrow (demain) around any given day. The months of the year is going well. We’re working on the month before and after any given month. That’s coming slowly.
The saisons de l’année are all memorized. We’re working on how each of them feel and the types of things we can do during each of them.
When I ask her “combien” for any of the above, she responds in complete sentences.
Printing words
Printing went very well this week. She drew a picture on the last page of two people holding umbrellas in the rain, going home.
Counting objects/math-type activities
She had no problems with the counting worksheet. We counted by 10s to 100 and counted up to 50.
Math went well this week. She enjoyed the second worksheet especially, and was very excited about how 10+50 worked. The people at the bottom of the pages are holding dandelions. In the second worksheet, the people are Kennedy and the Phantom. (Our little fan artist!)
Storytime
We read stories from the teacher’s outline that was sent to us on Monday. She enjoyed that, and we will continue to do it next week.
We watched Raiponce in French on Disney Plus, one episode a day. Dragon is enjoying it immensely, and is even recognizing some words!
Activity
Design a dragon – Dragon did very well at drawing from the reference and was quite happy with her result. The only thing I helped her with was pointing at her paper as to where the lines should go.
Learn about prosthetics – Dragon was fascinated by the videos I chose and asked to watch more. I’m not sure how much of the science she grasped, but she did understand the concepts by the end.
Make a paper boat – This activity went really well. I was impressed by the flexibility of the pattern we were following – even though she wasn’t as careful with her folds, making them even, her boat still turned out quite nicely.
Stress and Viewing Habits
Hello My Imaginary Friends,
If you haven’t guessed from previous blog posts, I’m a big fan of stories. I love to read, write, watch TV, watch movies, and just enjoy stories in general.
In 2020, the family and I watched 73 movies. I had so many movies that I had to do two reviews a week for a while and we did series as one post.
This year is completely different. I’m watching one movie a week and it’s often because I need a review for that weekend.
On the flip side, last year, we barely watched any television other than HGTV and Food network shows, DC’s Stargirl, Just Add Magic, and a few Disney shows. To some that would seem like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to this year. We’re still watching the HGTV and Food Network shows, but have added a binge of Leverage, Superman and Lois, Kung Fu, Bureau of Magical Things, WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and High School Musical The Musical The Series. We’ll be adding more as stuff ends and new things start.
It’s interesting to me that we’ve transitioned from movies to TV. Was it that there was nothing to watch? or did our needs change?
I think that for the better part of 2020, we felt like we were in a holding pattern, waiting to see what would happen. This led us to not wanting to invest time in something we might not be able to finish. So we binged a bunch of movies. With cinemas still closed but being used to the routine, we’ve started expanding our tastes to things that we don’t have to learn new characters every couple of days.
Basically we went from too stressed to commit to a TV series to just stressed enough that we don’t want to deal with new characters every few days.
The idea of watching a movie and learning the stories and personalities of the characters sounds exhausting when I could just watch a couple of episodes of Leverage, where I know the characters and can concentrate on the fun of the story.
If you need movie ideas and ranks check out the JenEric Movie Reviews every Saturday.
No matter what you’re watching, I hope you’re having fun.
Stay safe and be kind,
Éric
Jungle Beat: The Movie – JenEric Movie Review
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2020 film Jungle Beat: The Movie.
Story
The humour was uneven and the story really predictable, but the subtext of anti-colonialism was entertaining. They had a few moments of great consent and then had to go and ruin it. The entire ending being built on forced hugs, “because they really want it,” is super creepy.
Score: 0
Characters
The animals are sweet and extremely supportive. Great examples for kids. The alien is cute and wants to do the right thing. Overall a very positive group of characters.
Score: 1
Dialogue
The dialogue is all over the place, from deep to dumb, from funny to ridiculous. It has some seriously awesome lines and some really tedious sections.
Score: 0.5
Music and Visuals
Both the visuals and the music are uneven. Some is great, some not so much.
Score: 0.5
Fun
The adults laughed, the four year old was distracted and the two year old was bored. I’m not sure how that works, but apparently preschoolers aren’t big fans. (Not sure you should judge by my kids since they’ll sit still for Top Chef Canada and Leverage.)
My biggest issue was the consent thing. An entire planet cannot be made to feel love by forced hugs. That’s just wrong and gives kids a really bad message.
Score: 0.5
Overall
A funny and interesting kids movie that manages to both have a very pro-friendship message and undercut it by disregarding consent. It’s cute, has a lot of good jokes, and some of the most supportive characters I’ve ever seen, but be prepared to have a talk about forced hugs with the kids.
Final Score: 2.5