Play Pretending To Be Learning Pretending To Be Play

This mealtime Rockstar decided his outfit needed a little something extra.

A bit much? Nahhh…

We finally got up to showing Rockstar’s Weapons Wall…. When one kid in our household has a birthday big ticket item (as in: effort, not $$$ – the Queen’s was the Stuffed Animal High-rise and mid-height loft with slide), the other one gets a coupon too. Rockstar cashed his for…

Wait for it…

…there.

He’s got another bin of pieces collected over the years, for shame. There’s a US election year going on, there’s a little urban mummy legend going that you are not supposed to gift toy guns/ have toy guns at parties and playdates now…. And then there’s Rockstar Playing Space Cowboys Magnificent Seven. Again.

Like the Pokemon Go one, you know this is one of my Justification Posts right? To the. Max 😀 Might’ve been different if we didn’t have a computer nerd firstborn, but well, we kinda do. There’s semi-regular “Nerf Battles” around our large housing development (we know the places, but I’m not taking Rockstar because we don’t know any of the regulars well at all, and so I told Rockstar he’d have to get his own Dude Perfect Team…) Speaking of which, there is all this Dude Perfect footage where they burst balloons with Nerf pellet guns (and if you look at the background in their footage – it’s in the middle of freaking nowhere. No high rises, buildings, highways…. Bet they make those videos out of a barn somewhere :D) but nothing of Rockstar’s can burst a balloon even at close range (the ammunition is foam, and those orange ended “bullets” are a thin rubber membrane while the rest is hollow) – he actually tried it before – so I don’t know what those guys are doing on Youtube, maybe they put pins in the pellets when they shoot balloons.

Mostly however, Rockstar shoots a few darts and then spends the majority of the time at home taking these things apart and re-assembling them. Hence the bin of spare pieces and the house rule whereby he has to put these things back on the wall when he’s done. Because I go in there after a session and there’s a big pile of plastic pieces, much of which looking very little like what it did when I first put the guns on the wall and I have no idea how to put them back 😀

We umm, had run out of Lego that he likes and we have several boxes and cupboards full of this stuff – my next project is large Lego walls

When Rockstar has friends who like to shoot the things we used to try ski goggles until now there is an official Nerf mask and Rockstar being Rockstar wants his whole face covered). One family we know barricades the home with dining chairs and pillows in a point scoring system. And the boys get really sweaty. Another family we know uses plastic bottles or post-its for targets.

And here’s one with cans – pic from pinterest.com

We tried the different coloured post-its (scoring system – blue = 4points, pink = 7points, yellow = 2points – Hello skip counting/ times tables practice) but it was impossible to keep track of real scores once the boys got carried away and let fly or started wearing the post-its. We tried it with chalk once, but mostly just let them have a free for all in the end haha (For more Post-it learning ideas early learning has a whole page) …Doesn’t always work for us, those two have their own ideas – Rockstar likes rebuilding the actual guns and ends up making stuff for the Queen also (she rarely fires an actual Nerf pellet gun Rockstar always puts on a “sight”, those lights to show where you would aim, and she’s happy to aim the lights… Rockstar gave her his “laser sights” because he says when he “battles” his friends they can see the light and know he’s aiming at them. Being tiny (and crazy) however makes him very hard to hit when they’re outdoors. Oh and I finally worked some of the Queen’s learning environment in school here:

Really love this wall in her class during the Who We Are learning unit – polaroids, kids learning to write their names, and where they come from, on a world map

There are kids from so many countries, so many combinations of countries, in the two kids’ schools and time and again we always appreciate how they get to learn that way (and on the playground, and during crafts)  

This is so nice ok.. in Queen E’s Hillside classroom one day.. very zen… and not a Kumon practice book in sight… And – and – does that look like a mini congkak board on the left?!