Learning Together

The Case of the Summer Audiobook Binge: Hardy Boys to the Rescue!

When your daughter’s a bookworm with an ear for audiobooks, summer can turn into a literary marathon. This summer, she’s been running mighty fast.

The complete A to Z Mysteries series? Check.

Cam Jansen? More than ten of ’em.

Encyclopedia Brown? Nearly a dozen down.

But what happens when you start running low on fresh material?

Enter the Hardy Boys – and my chance to introduce one my childhood faves to a new generation of fan!

Here’s the lowdown:

Frank and Joe Hardy are high school seniors on paper but mature 13-year-olds in appearance (just check out that frontispiece!). Their supporting cast includes Chet (always hungry), Biff (always… there), and interchangeable girlfriends Iola and Callie. Papa Fenton Hardy is a famous detective who sets the family crime-solving bar high.

The formula? Simple but addictive. A mystery appears, the boys investigate, mild peril ensues, and the crime gets solved and the day saved!

Sure, the writing won’t win any literary prizes. But these books offer intriguing puzzles, satisfying resolutions, and solid lessons in character.

So far, we’ve tackled The Tower Treasure during bedtime reading, The Mystery of Cabin Island as car ride entertainment, and The Great Airport Mystery and What Happened at Midnight, which she’s listened to on her own.

The verdict? The Case of the Next Book Series is officially solved… at least until August rolls around!

Old School Gaming

During the summer, my daughter and I visit the local library at least two or three times a week. My daughter has her visits down to a ritual. She starts by checking out the audiobooks, then moves on to the bookshelves packed with series like How to Train Your Dragon, Wings of Fire, or The Hardy Boys. If she’s lucky enough to snag an available computer, that’s where the magic happens.

For the past six months, her go-to computer games have been ClueFinders 3rd Grade Adventures and ClueFinders 4th Grade Adventures. These games might be over 25 years old – practically ancient in the world of technology – but they’ve tested her skills in math, geography, logic, and science…and she loves playing them.

What’s truly impressed me recently is her old-school analog determination to conquer these games. Over the past week, armed with one of the library’s tiny pencils and a scrap of call-number paper, she’s started working out the tougher math problems by hand. The 30-minute computer time limit has always been a roadblock to beating the game, but now she’s making serious progress during her allotted time.

Her enthusiasm doesn’t stop at the library doors. She’s even found YouTube walkthroughs of the entire games (yes, they exist – here and here).

It’s funny to think that these games are old enough now to have kids of their own! While they may not be the cutting-edge educational tools of today, my daughter’s enjoyment of them is undeniable.

Cousin Time

Our little girl is blessed with four cousins. On my wife’s side, we’ve got the Greenville duo, practically our neighbors just two cow pastures away. They’re a constant presence in my daughter’s life, joining us for Sunday lunches and MYF at church. All three girls are thick as thieves in 4-H, though our daughter often finds herself in the role of the eager tagalong.

Then there’s the Columbia crew – one just nine months older than our daughter, and a wee one barely three months old. We’ve been spending the past few days with them, and it’s been a real treat. The age gap with the older Columbia cousin is just right – my daughter and this cousin, let’s call her J, are practically on the same wavelength and play as equals. It’s a refreshing change from the “little kid” dynamic she experiences with her Greenville cousins.

At my daughter’s age, I was far removed from my cousins. I had just one on my mom’s side – a boy almost two years younger, who lived in sunny Orlando while I bounced around Illinois, Iowa, and Kentucky. Our interactions were limited to an annual week-long visit, meticulously arranged by my mom. Those concentrated bursts of cousin time became cherished memories.

My daughter’s experience with her cousins is much different. Her cousins aren’t just summer visitors or holiday faces – they’re integral characters in her life. She won’t have those isolated weeks of cousin time to look back on. Her time with them will be more like a series of chapter-long adventures.

Of course, family dynamics are always evolving. My youngest brother just welcomed his first child, and there’s a possibility they might move back to my sister-in-law’s home in Louisiana. If that happens, we’d see that little niece (and any future children) far less frequently. It’s a good reminder to cherish the time we have together now.

Yesterday, as my daughter and I soaked up our time with my family, I found myself hoping it would become a day she’d carry with her. Whether it’s a Fourth of July party or just a day in the pool, these easy-to-take-for-granted connections will form my daughter’s sense of who she loves and who loves her.

Beating the Heat like a Fat Cat

Phew! It’s been scorching this week–we’re talking 90s and low 100s kind of hot. So, what better way to spend a sweltering summer afternoon than inside a cool, dark movie theater with my daughter?

Picking a movie wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. The options were pretty slim:

Paw Patrol: The Movie: The cheap flick of the week, but my 8-year-old deemed it too “pre-school.”
Into the Spiderverse: A rerun that seemed a bit out of her league. Would she need to know Spidey’s backstory to get the jokes? Was it a gateway to Spider-fandom or for existing fans only?
Garfield: The newly rebooted franchise starring everyone’s favorite grumpy, food-obsessed cat.

With my daughter being a cat lover, Garfield was the clear winner. And you know what? It wasn’t half bad! No swearing, nothing too problematic – just a bit of harmless silliness. The only weird bit was Garfield’s mouth actually opening, which isn’t really a thing in the Garfield-verse.

The verdict? My daughter absolutely loved it, so much so, in fact, that we hit up the library as soon as the movie was over to grab some DVDs of the late 80s-early 90s cartoon. We even swung by a used bookstore the next day to snag some classic Jim Davis Garfield compilations.

Who could have predicted that on a scorching summer day, a lazy, lasagna-loving cat would become my daughter’s cool new obsession?

Daughter + Dragons = Story Gold

My daughter has been into dragons for well over a year and even created characters and stories featuring dragons that she wanted to tell.

Last year, I wrote a story for her. This year, I wanted to help her bring her story to life. So, as the school year wound down, we worked together—with the help of ChatGPT—and out came Avalanche’s Ascent!

Summer Dispatch 1: So Much to Do

And then there was One. Week. Left.

We are a week from my daughter heading to second grade. The summer has flown by.

Last summer, she enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School, enjoyed the ocean for a few days, went to her first art camp, and fell in love with the world of Harry Potter.

This summer, she spent a week at VBS and once again enjoyed time in the ocean. In the past month, she has also revisited the first five Potter books in audiobook form (we’re holding off on volumes 6 and 7 until she’s a little older), and she continues to sleep in.

But a lot is different.

She took swimming lessons at the YMCA. While she didn’t learn to swim, she did learn to be less afraid of the water. Plus, she made new friends.
Speaking of which…she’s had playdates with school friends and proved herself capable of building friendships with kids she meets at libraries, etc.
She’s part of 4-H for the second year, but unlike last year, she’s doing projects this time. She completed her yearbook for her garden project last week (she helped plant, grow, and harvest a mixture of vegetables and flowers), and she’s been practicing leading her bucket calf (a growing Holstein steer) in anticipation of her first showing season. I saw her learn how to chip away at a pretty thick writing project a little daily, and she’s shown real bravery in dealing with her growing calf.
She attended her first drama camp, made new friends, and honed her intuitive comedic timing. I developed a routine of conducting a post-camp interview where my daughter would film herself while I asked her questions about the day. It gave her a chance to strut the performance skills she was learning, and I probably got more details out of her about how the day went than I would have otherwise.
She’s playing basketball for a co-ed YMCA league, a team where she is one of only two girls. This is her first time playing an organized sport, and she’s willingly practiced and shown marked improvement. We thought she would be a decent athlete. She’s proved our hypothesis correct.
She has started listening to audio CDs (we bought her a cheap cd player at Goodwill), and she’s gone through plenty of books from the Spy School and How to Train Your Dragon series. At the table each evening, we’ve had her read portions of the Bible too. You can tell she listens to a lot of audiobooks. It’s not just that she can read lots of words beyond her grade level. It’s that she reads with real energy and precision.

There have been a couple of random day trips to the local zoo and science center and plenty of visits to local libraries.

Every single day, she does at least one thing that frustrates me (e.g., a histrionic reaction to ill-fitting socks) and one thing that endears her to me (e.g., using the word “situated” as a way to describe what she’s going to do with her horses when she gets back to her room).

I have more specific content to post here, but this is a reminder to myself (as much as anyone else) about what she’s been up to during the last eight weeks. I’m proud of her.

Spring Dispatch 2: The Time-Traveling Truck

I wrote my daughter a book. Its hero is a third-grade girl named Harper Lee Williams, who travels in time with her grandpa to visit cowboys.

I wrote one chapter a mystery called The Farm Sleuth. When I asked my daughter if she enjoyed it, she said, “It was like there were magnets drawing me to other books.” I kept the central character but rewrote the story as a time-traveling adventure. The Time-Traveling Truck was born.

My favorite part was writing a chapter during the day and reading it to my daughter at night. She was a good editor.

“What’s going to happen next?” That was a sign I had done good work.

“It needs more of a twist!” That was a sign I needed to revise.

I hope to do this again.

Spring Dispatch 1: Spring Break 2023!

My daughter spent the first day of her spring break at school…only it was my school.

She endured the fifty-minute-one-way commute, went to two different meetings, checked out books in the library, attended chapel, and grabbed lunch in the caf.

Chilling in my office watching cartoons while I was teaching? Yep.

Walking around campus in the afternoon and running into students and colleagues? Check.

Two worthwhile moments:

“Dad, do you know what I like most about coming to SWU? You’re here!” That’s some Hallmark-level heartstring appeal!
After her first shy interaction with a colleague, I encouraged her to look people in the eye and be sweet. She did so for the rest of her time on campus.

Winter Dispatch 3: Transformers

Here’s a parenting truism: my daughter’s not going to like everything that I like, and I’m not going to like everything she likes.

My wife and I are culture hounds, so we want our daughter to dig good books, music, and movies. We’re seven years in, and she’s doing pretty well. She loved Charlotte’s Web, sings along with “Walking on the Moon” by The Police, and gladly watched The Wizard of Oz.

When she was four, I introduced her to a bit of pop culture I loved at her age: The Transformers. I had the toys, I read the comics, and I watched the cartoon. She seemed game. Pretty soon, she was singing the catchy theme song, and I was getting my nostalgia fix while she watched cartoons. Parenting score!

At some point (I’m not sure when), my daughter turned against The Transformers. Over the past couple of months, her antipathy has intensified, and it’s become a go-to joke.

“Can I watch cartoons?” “Yep. If you watch Transformers…” “Dad!”

“I got a movie for us to watch tonight.” “What is it?!?” “Transformers: The Movie.” “Dad!”

It culminated a month ago with her singing the tune of the theme song with altered words.

“Transformers / More than meets the eye!” became “Transformers / Catherine hates it so!”

Even I had to laugh at that one.

I certainly didn’t love everything my parents did (Thirtysomething or Twila Paris).

Plus, she nailed the syllables and rhythm. I lost the battle but won the war.

Winter Dispatch 2: Tuesdays with Stories

My daughter and I have a new Tuesday routine.

At 2:15 pm, I pick her and her cousin up from school, drop the cousin off at her house, grab a snack at our place, then head to the public library for a couple of hours.

My daughter spends her time previewing new books, playing computer games, and completing her weekly homework.

I wasn’t the only parent with this idea. From 3-5 pm, this small library branch features plenty of elementary schoolers hanging with tutors or parents and doing the same thing we’re doing.

Saturday has long been Library Day for my daughter and me, but we rarely go to this branch or stay for this long. It’s been nice to become familiar with the librarians and not feel like the library is a box we need to check before we get donuts (our other Saturday ritual).

Our streak is up to three weeks, and we’ve left each time with an assortment of books, audiobooks, and completed math and language arts exercises.

As for the donuts? Well, that’s a story we’ll save for Saturdays.