Introducing Our Newest Pet, "Shaka"

Meet Shaka, our newest pet! When he is hard at work, we call him "Shaka the Tutor". 

Shaka is not a real dog. In fact, he hails from Microsoft PowerPoint! He does not live in a fancy neighborhood, either; I got him from ClipArt! Despite his humble origin, he turned out to be the main character of our homemade tutorials, "Learning with Shaka".

We "adopted" our virtual pet yesterday and trained him to be our children's math tutor. Picture him as the scholastic version of Microsoft Office's "Clippy", the defunct paperclip character that had served as the "Office Assistant" for many years.

Named after the "shaka" sign, a hand gesture used in Hawaii to convey the "Aloha Spirit", Shaka proved beneficial to both parent and child since the day we welcomed him into our home; his presence reminded us that the learning process does not have to be frustrating.  We can take a break when things aren't working and use that time to harness our imagination and creativity to explore new ways to learn. It may not necessarily be the fastest route, but in our case, it is the best. If anything, creating Shaka helped me to redirect my frustration.  The result? I ended up doing something more creative, productive, and effective.

Every time I see Shaka, I will remember to teach my children with aloha.

How did we come up with this idea?

Helping my children yesterday with their school work got really, really frustrating, so I decided to pull myself out of the situation while offering to revisit the mathematical problem only after I had finished creating visual aids.  Apparently, the explanation on the text book wasn't making any sense to my son. It made sense to me (I thought to myself), and quite frankly, as parents, we secretly wish that our children would just "get it"...especially when it comes to learning concepts that we so easily grasped when we were their age. Yes, yes...we are quite aware that these are unrealistic expectations and that we're not being fair, but such wishes become even much stronger when we have to tend to the ever-increasing demands of other members of the family...in our case, a newborn baby.

With the baby on one hand, I single-handedly (literally) started creating a PowerPoint presentation as a visual aid for my son. The ClipArt selection isn't very exciting for kids, so I settled with using an image of a dog throughout the entire presentation. By the time I was finished, I had created a total of 60 slides!

Never in my life did I ever imagine that developing a PowerPoint presentation for a second-grader would be more challenging than preparing one for members of senior management within a large, complex organization!

My son eagerly awaited the completion of "our project" and would graciously visit me from time to time in my room. He would read parts of the presentation and say, "Hey, this is fun!" Talk about moral support! That one comment (coming from a kid who initially did not like to read) fueled me to finish what I would have once thought to be a ridiculous project. I seriously geeked out on this one!

In the end, Shaka turned a frustrating moment into a creative, fun-filled, and mentally stimulating one. He encouraged my son to read and learn new words in a fun and engaging way while giving him a better understanding of a mathematical concept. 

Just as noteworthy, this exercise introduced my children to Microsoft PowerPoint, where Shaka "lives". They now know where and how to visit their virtual pet and successfully launch our homemade tutorials.

So now, my older son wants me to create a "Shaka tutorial" for him!

Perhaps, we'll see more of Shaka the Tutor later. He is only a day old, and he is already making his mark! I think he deserves a virtual treat!