PilotWings Resort: A Great 3DS Game for All Ages

Did your child talk you into getting a Nintendo 3DS, and now your wondering what would be an age appropriate game for them? Look no further than PilotWings Resort.

The Nintendo 3DS is the newest portable gaming system from Nintendo. Like the Nintendo DS before it the 3DS as dual screens, but the top screen on the 3DS emulates a three dimensional effect, without any 3D glasses! It layers multiple images in a way that when you look at the screen straight on it creates one image that has multiple layers of depth. It's one of those things that has to be seen to be believed, but it's true!

PilotWings Resort is one of the launch titles for the new console, and it's one of the best games to showcase the 3D capabilities of the 3DS. With the game being rated E for everyone, it's also one of the best launch games for children of all ages. Children will enjoy it to, because it's fun! Your character can fly multiple arial vehicles such as planes, hand gliders, and jet packs. You can explore the brightly colored island locale openly in free flight mode, or tackle the mission mode for more specific challenges. This ranges from getting through obstacles to target practice. There is no real violence in the game except shooting, but even then your only shooting targets or balloons.

Children and adults alike can find something fun in PilotWings Resort for the Nintendo 3DS!

Pinwheels for Prevention

If you visit Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in April, you'll see a host of blue and silver pinwheels, beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

(I was an English major, and oft, in vacant or pensive mood, Wordsworth's poem flashes upon my inner eye. I can't help it.)

Three thousand pinwheels, to be exact. And the day I visited, the first sunny day in over a week, they did seem to be dancing, throwing off light from 1200 silvery petals. They were perfect beacons of hope.

For many years, April has been "Child Abuse Prevention Month," symbolized by blue ribbons. This year, Prevent Child Abuse Virginia (PCAV) has introduced the blue pinwheel as an addition symbol. The 3000 pinwheels palnted in the Children's Garden represent the children who have been served by the Healthy Families Virginia program last year in the Central Virginia and Tidewater regions.

(Healthy Families is a national program model whose ultimate goal is to enhance child growth and development by teaching positive parenting and preventing abuse and neglect. PCAV runs the program in Virginia.)

PCAV invites everyone to plant a pinwheel--or a pinwheel garden--in April to show support for healthy families and a world free of child abuse and neglect. You can make your own pinwheel or purchase one for $1, with proceeds benefitting PCAV. Call (804) 359-6166 ext. 309 to order.

Orienteering: Out on a Limb

Those kids in my Ranger Rick magazines always looked so smart and happy, running through the woods, strung with compasses and clutching maps. I wanted to go orienteering too, but no one where I grew up had ever heard of it.

So a couple decades later, I decided it was time to take some action and drag my own kids along with me. Virginia has at least two orienteering groups, Quantico Orienteering Club and James River Orienteering Club. JROC held an event at York River State Park in early March, so we drove out there one crisp, sunny Saturday morning with very little idea of what to expect. I knew that you had to find a bunch of flags without getting lost, but that's about it.

The nice thing about orienteering--especially if you're trying it for the first time and you have a 4-year-old who wants to ride on your shoulders every 15 minutes--is that you can start when you want, take as much time as you want (up to 3 hours) and find as many or as few flags as you want in any order you choose.

Sure, for some people it's a race, with points awarded for each flag, and so on. But we were there just to have fun, and we did. Even Helen, who got to jump across a little creek, read the code on a flag, and ride on mom's shoulders.

Of the 20+ flags, many seemed to be fairly close to established trails, but that doesn't mean they're easy to find or get close enough to in order to read the code you had to write on the scoresheet. (The video on Richmond Parents Monthly's main webpage shows Emily getting the code from a flag placed in the middle of a tree that fell over a gully.)
We took about an hour to find 5 flags, then called it a morning and ate a picnic lunch overlooking the York River. (The park itself has paddleboat and canoeing options, clean restrooms, a little nature center, and lots of hiking, biking and horseriding trails. Admission is $3 per vehicle.)

Unless you go orienteering alone (which you shouldn't until you gain some experience), it is a sport that absolutely requires teamwork, cooperation, planning, compromise and flexibility--mental and physical! Shawn Callahan, who heads up JROC, also does orienteering programs for business, schools and groups of young people. I can see why it would be an excellent team-building activity.

It can be a little intimidating to go to an orienteering event for the first time, but we weren't the only first-timers at York River. Both JROC and QOC have occasional events in the Richmond area that are open to anyone. At the York River meet, I picked up a flyer about a youth orienteering club in Richmond, with events right around the corner:

"Learn compass basics and the map-reading skills needed to participate in an Orienteering meet. During three 1-hour sessions, we will discuss and practice the skills necessary to finish a beginner, kid-level O-course. All kids ages 6-16 are welcome. Parents are encouraged to stay with the younger ones."
Dates: March 16, April 13 and May 18
Time: 3-4 p.m.
Cost: Clinic is free; compass fee is $12 if you need one. Expect a $5-10 entry fee for the May meet.
Where: Deep Run Park on 3/16 and 4/13--rear parking lot near soccer fields. Details about the May O-meet (Rockwood Park) will be handed out at the clinics.
RSVP: Tim Dunkum, fivedunkums@verizon.net, http://www.richmondasr.com/. (Click on the "Community" link and scroll down a bit.)

For more info about kids' orienteering in general, see this link to the US Orienteering Federation site.

Yoga Really Is For Everyone!

Two books from two different publishers arrived in the mail today: "Itsy Bitsy Yoga for Toddlers and Preschoolers" and "Yoga for Arthritis."


A quick web search turns up the following yoga books:


Yoga for Wimps
Yoga for Dummies
Yoga for Golfers
Yoga for Regular Guys
Yoga for Your Hands
Yoga for Suits
...and lots more, including my favorite:

So that means I'm waiting for someone to write these books:


Yoga for Barbarians
Yoga for Knitters
Yoga for Bad Drivers
Yoga for Presidential Campaign Managers
Yoga for Goldfish


Any takers?

Elliott Yamin is Gonna Be Upstaged!

Thirty kids from all around the Richmond area are practicing hard for their moment in the spotlight at the Central Virginia Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Gala on March 1. (See our main page for a video of a recent rehearsal. Don't they sound great?)

They'll be sharing the spotlight, and the microphone, with some dude named Elliott Yamin. But for the kids I talked to before a rehearsal last week, being on stage with the "American Idol" star was less significant than the fact they're getting to sing their hearts out with others who share their experience of being a kid with Type 1 diabetes.

Baylee, 10, was just diagnosed in August. Her mother said she has endured some weird looks and teasing in school when she has to prick herself to monitor her blood sugar levels. She was so happy to get involved in JDRF and find out that she's not the only one in that situation.

When I asked Baylee who she'd be singing with at the gala, she said, "A lot of other kids!" "Anyone else?" I asked. She looked at her mom, trying to remember the name of that other guy. "Oh yeah, Elliott Yamin," she said.

Kendal, 7, seemed a little nervous about remembering all the words to the song, but she said she had been going over them and practicing hard.

Samantha is 7 now and was diagnosed when she was 2 years old. She wears an insulin pump, which means that her dosage of insulin to correct her blood sugar levels is regulated by the pump. She and Savannah, 8, were both very matter-of-fact as they told me about what the pump does.

Cole, 7, has hope that a cure for diabetes will be found. He says he wants to be able to eat candy like other kids.

Many of the kids had glamorous accessories, to go with the gala's theme: "Lights, Camera, Take Action!" Click on the link if you'd like to take action and learn more about JRDF or attend the gala!

Homework: Just another excuse not to clean your room

MetLife released the results of a survey of teachers, parents and students this week, "The Homework Experience" (warning: 207 pages of pdf). It's part of The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher series.

Some of the results are very interesting; for example, 30% of secondary students describe homework as 'busywork'-- compared to a whopping 74% of such students who said that in 2002. (What's going on with that?!)

But I can't figure out what the practical application of this survey is supposed to be.

Will teachers (24% of whom think the quality of their schools' homework is 'excellent') care that 33% of parents think their child's school gives only 'fair' or 'poor' quality homework? Should they care? What is quality homework?

91% of teachers say that 'doing homework helps students learn more in school'; 86% give homework to 'help students practice skills or prepare for tests.' So you do homework to pass tests... does that mean you've learned more? (I can't pass up a link to an enormously intriguing book on this subject: Alfie Kohn's "The Homework Myth.")

Separately, a small group of teachers and school administrators discussed challenges related to creating, assigning and evaluating homework, and its relationship to the bigger picture of education. Chapter 6 of the survey's report summarizes their discussion and offers some hope of application. One of their main conclusions was that homework should be 'relevant to the day's lessons." Wheeee!

I'm married to a teacher, so I'm sympathetic to the problems teachers face: no homework assignment will be perfectly relevant for every child in a classroom, but who has time to create (and then assess the results of) 2, 3, 10, 50 different assignments for the same concept? And who wants to deal with explaining to 100 students (and their parents) why Tina got a longer assignment than Tony, while Tito didn't get any assignment at all?

If I had easy answers, I'd quit my job and run for the School Board (...er, on second thought: no.) I don't think "The Homework Experience" survey has any easy or astonishing answers, but it is certainly good food for thought for anyone interested in education.

Yo-yo: More Than Just a Cool Word to Say

I had heard that astonishing things were possible with yo-yos, but to see those tricks in real life was a thrill. I caught the finals of the Open Freestyle division at the Virginia State Yo-yo Contest, held last Saturday at the Children's Museum of Richmond, and it was spectacular.

On our main webpage, you can watch some video clips of Sebastian and Ann competing. Sebastian is a student at the College of William and Mary. He was the 2006 and the 2007 Virginia State Champion in the 1A Division. (In yo-yo speak, 1A means you're using one yo-yo to do string tricks with the yo-yo spinning at the end of the string.) Each competitor in this round had three minutes to do their stuff to the song of their choosing.

If you're interested in learning more about yo-yo tricks, Tony Basch (Richmond's yo-yo spinmeister) recommends a couple websites such as Begin2Spin and tricks.skilltoys.org.