Soielle

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Summer School

This week was full of learning and surprises! We have been mixing different butters and oils and experimenting with new recipes in general. One thing is for sure, we must teach the twins how to pour mostly in the bottles and not everywhere else haha! The twins had fun though with the experiments and have created a lab where girls are definitely rocking it. I’m personally entertained by how genuinely surprised they are when what they expect to happen does not. I guess that is the nature of science and chemistry, we all have our preconceived notions until we actually test and record the results. Actually, writing that last sentence seems a lot more to do with life altogether. With each new adventure, we share new experiences that’s is being absorbed into their young minds. 

We are halfway through the summer and making major strides with learning Python. I have been introducing the girls to stem toys over the years, but this summer we have been laser-focused on coding in Python. This past March we were forced to do remote learning like many other families. We realized that we had to assist our kids through the entire process because they are much younger at 7 years old and didn’t know their way around a keyboard, let alone trying to get them to understand how to login with their username, password, and make sure they are connected to the WIFI. Then we realized they didn’t know how to access files and get to their Zoom meetings. Basically, everything I take for granted because I use a computer every day for work and this was the first time, they had to rely solely on a computer to learn. We spent a lot of time teaching them during this period the fundamentals of using and navigating a computer. In a few weeks, we were surprised how the girls turned into seasoned pros as we watched them effortlessly navigate to different files, meetings, and found games that we now have to limit them from using.

We wanted to build on the momentum we created at the end of the school year, so we decided we were going to learn Python in the summer! A daunting task to say the least, but my mentality was if they can read, they can code. Every day we would wake up early and teach the twins Python and they would look back at us like we were speaking an alien language. We tried different methods on trying to get them to learn the basic concepts and found that games work the best with children at this age. Just like in March, we would assist them with the different lessons walking them through the process until it was finished. It seemed like they really were not getting it, but I was determined to not let them give up! Today was nothing short of amazing. As we were getting ready for the normal lesson, I realized they already created their own code based on what we learned the past few weeks! It was about their favorite candy, so that earned them a trip to the store to pick out a big bag of their favorite candy! We still have a long journey, but I have faith they will be young Pythonistas by the end of the summer. How amazing is that?!!