That’s building with blocks!
Week 3 – Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie Results
Despite my struggles at the beginning of the week (con-drain is all too real), this week went well.
Dance
I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.
Music
This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. He needs to build up his finger strength, especially in his baby fingers, before my mom can teach him properly. He also needs to be more familiar with the names of the keys, which I continued teaching him, both forward and backward.
Crochet
I helped him do several blocks of stitches… probably about 6 inches. He’s excited to be able to wear it, but there’s still so much left to do.
Basic Information
We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). I suggested he sing along, which he was happy to attempt.
Printing words
The pencil grip is helping immensely, especially now that I’ve noticed that it was on the pencil upside down. He didn’t struggle with the printing words and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard.
Counting objects/math-type activities
He moved the pencil himself, but he kept losing track of what number he was on (Monday). On Wednesday when he did the second sheet, he wanted me to move the pencil.
Storytime
We went to the library on Monday and picked up 3 mini French books, which we read during the week.
Activity
Bake bread – I’m going to call this a complete success. We used this bread-in-a-bag recipe, and it worked perfectly. Everyone wanted a second piece. Pegasus wasn’t really strong enough to knead it, but he had fun punching it.
Make butterfly (akuma) bookmarks – we used construction paper, which is a little thicker than what is recommended, but still functions quite well. I liked this activity, because even though he needed to refold several times, or he didn’t quite get the fold in the right place, it still turned out looking like what it was supposed to.
Design a superhero costume and kwami – I was hoping that he would slow down and really think about what he wanted to design for his superhero costume, but he really didn’t. He always thinks of colouring and drawing as if it’s a race against time and it makes me sad.
Dear Dragon – Welcome to Level 7
Dear Dragon,
What a big year. It started out a little rocky when the digital school switched their teachers around and you went from Mme Natalie’s class to Mme Francine’s class. It was a 1-2 split and you were inconsolable for almost a month. In the end, Mme Francine won you over and proved to be an excellent teacher.
This year you learned and did a lot:
- Lots of math and arts (Art was your favourite subject)
- French (You’ve improved so much it’s amazing)
- Reading (You’ve gone from struggling to read a small book to devouring novels) Seeing you go to the library and how excited you got was the highlight of my summer.
- You had your first crush and it’s freaking cute
- You learned to swim in Grannie and Granddad’s pool
- and so much more
This weekend you had your first birthday party with friends. It was super stressful for Mum and I, but you seemed to enjoy yourself, mostly. You had a small meltdown when you struggled to keep up with the 4th and 5th graders that were at the party. You loved your presents, although you said, “My friends over-estimated how much I like unicorns.”
I’m extremely proud of how welcoming and inclusive you were. You made sure everyone was having fun and felt included, which isn’t easy with a group of shy kids. You’re showing signs of a good leader.
Another big step was going to in-person school. I think that was much harder on me then it was on you. Not seeing what you’re doing makes me feel like I’m missing out and simultaneously like an overbearing parent. Sigh. You seem to be loving it and have made friends. One of which you actually remembered their name. Lol. I wonder how long we’ll refer to the one as, “the girl with the same shoes”, another as “the cute girl”, or the “cousin of the girl with the same shoes”. You seem happy and that’s what matters. I hope you’ll be able to learn and experience as much as you did the previous year.
You are clever, sassy, strong willed, and fast to help others. I worry about your penchant for being distracted, anxious, and having meltdowns when you don’t understand something.
You are still highly competitive and precocious, two things that can be great assets as you grow up. They can also be negatives if you’re not careful. As long as I’m around, I’ll support you and help guide you as best I can.
Happy Birthday and I hope you have a great year.
I love you so much my Dragon girl,
Your Papa
Elemental – JenEric Movie Review
How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 2023 film Elemental.
Story
The trailers made this look like a trope-y rom-com rip-off of Zootopia. What it is instead is a wonderful story of immigration and family. The elements together in a big city is used well and not as a gimmick but a metaphor.
Score: 1
Characters
The two main charactes are animated in very traditional proportions and that’s unfortunate and stereotypical.
Their personalities are much better however and don’t fall into stereotypes too much. It did feel a little odd that neither of them had friends.
The rest of the characters and cast are fun and fairly well fleshed out.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
There are so many element puns that I can’t wait to rewatch and catch more.
The dialogue was very honest to their emotions and simplified. I liked the micro-aggressions from the well-meaning family, it gave the story some needed grounding.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
The animation was amazing. Lighting, colour, detail, backgrounds, all beautiful. I loved the line art look of the fire people.
One of the fun parts of watching things with subtitles is seeing how they describe the music. Accorting to the subtitles, the music was “[Emotion] New Age music”. It was however extremely well done and worked perfectly with the tone and feel of the world.
Score: 1
Fun
This was fun in every concievable way. The 6yo said it was good but not great and the three year old concured.
The rest of the family loved it and I think it’s one of my top Pixar movies. Definitely going to want to rewatch this one.
Score: 1
Overall
The movie takes the story of an immigrant family and wraps it into a magical world of elements. The emotions are authentic and story compelling. It’s colourful, fun, and easy to watch.
Final Score: 4.5 Stars out of 5
“Crushing It” Review 5
Crushing It was sent out for reviews in May, and I’ve received some in return. Here’s one from bookstagrammer JourneytoBiscovery:
Crushing It by Jen Desmarais is available now!
Physical from Canadian indie bookstores, physical from Indigo, electronic version
Week 4: Nimona
This week, we will be focussing on Nimona, released in 2023. This is a new favourite in our house.
Here is the link for the downloadable materials. (I hope this works…please let me know if you have any problems so I can fix it!)
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| Nature walk | Watch movie | Sew a button | Flex | Charades |
Summary of the week
Dance
Ballet and martial arts on alternate days
Music
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano, learning guitar
Crochet
The project he is working on (currently he is making himself 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
Download material
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type –(in download material)
Storytime
Activity
Nature walk – look for different kinds of leaves, acorns, maple keys, flowers, etc
Sewing a button
Play charades
Next week: Moana (2016)
Week 2 – Tangled Results
This second week was much better for both Pegasus and I. We have come to an agreement that he is not allowed to say “I can’t”, because he is capable of more than he realizes. He is allowed to ask for help or for a break, obviously. I am more than happy to allow him those. We have discovered that the mouse we have currently is too big for his hands, and we are going to try one of the smaller mice next week.
Dance
I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.
Music
This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. We have one this time around, and it’s a wonderful activity to distract him with because he enjoys it.
I continued working with him on the names of the keys. We practised both forward and backward.
Crochet
We didn’t work on his shawl this week because I was working on Comiccon projects all week. We’ll pick this up again next week.
Basic Information
We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). For the first few weeks, I’m just letting him listen and passively absorb the information. He attempted singing both songs this week, and needed a lot of assistance, which is a little earlier than I thought he’d want to try.
Printing words
The pencil grip is helping immensely. He didn’t struggle with the printing words and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard.
Counting objects/math-type activities
The colours printed well! Using a pencil to cover up the lines that he hadn’t gotten to yet worked well again. I’ll see if next week, he’s willing to try moving the pencil himself.
He’s very good at writing 4’s.
Storytime
Not much French read this week, as it was such a short week (holiday Monday and comic con on Friday).
Activity
Baking – cookies. Pegasus made multi-chip cookies, with Papa supervising. He did a great job and they taste delicious.
Painting – free-style with Crayola washable paint on paper. We did this outside on possibly the hottest day imaginable and I hated every second of it lol!
Make a paper lantern – need paper bag, stencil (in download material), cardboard, paper towel folded in fourths, and screwdriver (instructions are Number 11). Put the paper bag over the cardboard box, and slide the folded paper towel in between the box and the bag. Place the stencil overtop of the bag/paper towel. Use the screwdriver to punch holes in the stencil/paper bag. Be careful not to move the stencil, or you will mess up your design.
So we used a pushpin instead of a mini screwdriver, and it worked, but the holes are VERY TINY. I forgot the paper towel, so that might have something to do with it? He’s happy with it, and that’s all that matters, right?
We held the stencil down with clips, which worked perfectly.
How I crushed the writing of “Crushing It”
It was 2021, and I had just finished writing Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers with Éric. We’d gotten feedback from the first beta reader, and it was effusive.
I was writing short stories for our Short Story Collection (currently on submission) and I thought, “I’d like to write something about Kennedy’s younger brother, Tommy. I wonder what his story is.”
I decided he had to come to Westmeath, and thought it would be cool to write about the tech side of the city. I already had a built-in friend for Tommy in Carter, from Assassins, and I was looking forward to writing more of his character, especially after some of the short stories I had written. I added Elyse, Rachel’s younger sister, and thus the trio was complete.
Beyond that, my jot notes were the classes during the March Break camp at Door Tech, and that was it.
I started writing during “March” Break, which was in April in 2021. I wrote pretty much the entire thing on my phone, thumb-swiping as I nursed my youngest to sleep. It was taking literal hours for sleep to come, so I had quite a bit of dedicated writing time.
I had told myself, before I started writing, that this wasn’t going to be a romance. The trio would be friends.
Wow did a curveball ever get thrown my way when Tommy’s reactions to Carter were so shy and awkward. I was super confused at first. Why was he reacting like that?
And then I figured out that he had a crush!
I panicked.
I’m not gay. I didn’t know if I should be writing his story since I wasn’t gay!
So I messaged my publisher and asked his opinion. I believe I also talked to a couple other queer authors to ask what they thought as well, but I don’t remember who.
The unanimous response was “Go for it! He’s your character. If he’s gay, then that’s what you should write!”
I went back to add a little bit more obvious reactions, and then continued writing. I got to the end of the camp, sent Tommy home, and added the novella to the collection of completed works.
Halfway through July, I told Éric that I wanted to write fanfic for Tommy. He thought that was hilarious and told me to write actual content.
So I started writing a short story about what happened to Tommy after he got home. At this point, I introduced Faith.
And I got an idea to have them go to a STEM competition. A province-wide competition that would take place in Toronto, so I could have the boys meet up again.
My jot notes expanded to include the competition topics. (If you’re keeping track, that means my jot notes were the sum of a list of classes and a list of competition activities.)
And I wrote. I was still writing at night while nursing, thumb-swiping on my phone. I would guess that 90% of this book was written in this way.
I did research into the science behind things. I got help from Éric, my mom, and my sister for various topics (especially the coding!).
And then one day I did a word count.
I sheepishly went to Éric and told him, “I think I’m writing a book.”
He said, “I know.”
Oops.
And that’s how I accidentally wrote a book!
Crushing It by Jen Desmarais is available now!
Physical from Canadian indie bookstores, physical from Indigo, electronic version
The Rescuers – JenEric Movie Review
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1977 film The Rescuers.
Story
It followed the basic recipe of old noire detective stories even, ending on a boat. The story is well contained and cute, but not super original and wastes a lot of time on antics instead of story or characters.
Score: 0.5
Characters
I really like the interplay between the two mains, there was a nice romance arc to them. I also like the competent but humble male lead. It’s a nice switch.
The little girl was cute and the albatross hilarious, but the others were a little boring. The villain felt like a bad copy of Cruella.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
The dialogue was efficient and had some nice quippy lines. Again, most of the best dialogue was between the two main characters.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
Watching it on Blu-ray meant being able to see the brush strokes on the stunning backgrounds. This movie was beautiful. I can see where this still influenced other film makers.
The music was good, especially the songs.
Score: 1
Fun
It’s a fun, easy to watch adventure movie with two likeable main characters. What’s not to like? The 6yo and the 4yo were glued to their seats (a refreshing change).
Score: 1
Overall
A classic adventure movie that is absolutely beautiful to watch and has two of the most likeable main characters in animated history.
Final Score: 4 Stars out of 5