Where to start?

This first week of my learning project has been tricky for me about knowing where to start so I admit, I have procrastinated it until I find myself under pressure.  I sometimes find it hard to carve out time to do tasks like these in my busy work, school, mom life, I will do better this week!

I decided the best place to start was to practice my skills where they are now and see how it goes.  My husband put my mannequin head together this week and mounted it for me at my height so that I could get started.  I did my classic single braid with a little bit of hair, the one I would give my girls when they were little and I felt bad I couldn’t do beautiful braids for them, I would do this single braid and then pull it back into a ponytail or a top knot/bun for them.  As my girls are now teenagers it is rare that I get the chance to braid their hair so this is how I did.

Next I decided to see if I could do one big braid as a whole ponytail.  I cannot do it from the top of the head and moving my way down because I struggle with gathering and adding more hair as I go.  I could not pull this type of braid off often as my girls hair is thick and I found that I often lost humph somewhere, and it all came back to me quickly as this braid was automatically loose, which would probably fall out on a normal moving persons head.  I also never know how to finish the end off when there is more hair on one strand then the next so I usually just scoop it into another loop.

I am gonna head and find some helpful videos for this week, hopefully.  Watch for what kind of braid I do next.

Is technology taking over my life?

This is an interesting topic for me to reflect on, as this is a daily discussion in our house.  Living in a world or pre teen and teenagers there is always conversations about how much time they are on their devices…but to be honest I never relate it to how much I am on mine.  Reality is my phone is with me at all hours of the day and night, it has become my lifeline.  If I don’t have my phone at an accessible reach then I am wearing my apple watch so that I feel like you can get ahold of me whenever you need to.  I never felt that I needed to be able to be reached at all times until I got my first iPhone, oh the things I could do on here that I couldn’t do on my old flip phone or blackberry.  Since getting my first iPhone, my digital camera has long been forgotten, it is so much easier to pull my phone out and capture every moment that I want to.

When I look at my daily tech life, it’s actually astonishing how much I use it in my everyday life.  Now that I have returned to school I spend countless of hours on my laptop each week, and it has opened a whole new world of possibility for me as many classes can be done online and cut down on the amount I would have to drive to return to university.  It took a whole lot of stress off of me knowing that I could now do 95% of my degree online-it was now feasible as working mom to finally finish my degree.  If I look at how much time I spend on Facebook and Instagram, it’s embarrassing to admit how many hours I waste on both of these apps, most of the time I am irritated and annoyed by the time I’m done-this in itself should be a reason to cut back, but what do I do instead, I mute those people so there feed isn’t constantly on mine.  I do use Snapchat intermitedly, more so I can watch where my kids are on their maps, which I do admit that if I was a kid that would make me crazy!!

During COVID times and at home learning as a family we really started using more educational apps.  I worked in the school system as an EA so I had to learn how these apps all worked on the teacher side, which again I am not super techy so I had to learn the backside of these apps as well as the student side to help my kids get through this process.  We used Seesaw and  Microsoft Teams on a daily basis to complete school work and communicate with teachers and students.  I also learned how to use Boom Cards as an extra fun learning tool with students.  Right now the app that I use for my children in school is Edsby.  I find this app super useful as a parent, I like that I can pre set attendance when I know my child will miss school and I am able to keep track of their grades as often as I want.  I feel like this is one of the best educational apps that we have been given to use.

There are many apps that we use to keep our family organized.  The main one we use is Timetree, this is a calendar app, I am able to color code each of our family members and they an also be added so that everyone knows where everyone is supposed to be, it has became such a handy tool for our busy family.  We also use TeamLinkt and TeamSnap for extra curricular schedules, this can also be downloaded on multiple family devices, I do prefer Teamsnap over TeamLinkt it is far easier to navigate as a coach and parent.

I took a half time leave from my job this fall to do schoolwork in the afternoons when my kids are in school, I am finding that I often get distracted by my phone, mostly playing yatzee and randomly scrolling social media.  I then find myself opening my laptop once my kids go to bed and I am up until late everyday, which turns into a vicious circle of being tired everyday, so this is something I need to work at and get better at putting my phone down and buckling down.  One app that I have not downloaded is TikTok, I know that this app will consume massive amounts of my time and therefore I have stayed clear of it, trying to not get into the dreaded dark TikTok hole.

Technology definitely has its time and place and it has made our lives better in many ways, but I for one need to do better at putting it down and enjoying the things in life more.

Hi, its nice to meet you

Hi everyone!

My name is Angela Fahlman and I am currently in my 2nd year of the K-5 elementary program. I have always wanted to work with children and had my heart set on becoming a teacher, but another four years of school and a student loan at the end intimidated me so looked at alternate options. I still went to school right after high school, but I started off in Addictions Counselling and then I transferred into the Educational Transliterator program (sign language interpreter in classrooms).   I returned to classes in 2019 and after a full year of classes I decided that I couldn’t fully dedicate the time I needed to complete my degree as my children were all quite young still, and we live in small town Saskatchewan so I had to commute multiple days a week.  I have continued to work in the education field as an educational assistant as my children grew up.  My dream of becoming a teacher has never gone away and I often felt like it was too far out of reach.  As the time went on I decided that it was time to follow my dream and get this degree under my belt, so I have readmitted into the program and I am ready to take it on.

Photo courtesy of Focus 22  Photography
https://www.focus22photography.ca/

 

I decided to take EDTC because I am not very tech savvy.   I find that this course is a bit intimidating, but I am excited to learn some new tricks and get a bit more accustomed to using new programs.  Through COVID and online learning I had to learn how to use Microsoft teams and SeeSaw to stay connected with students.  This was a HUGE learning curve for me as they were both new programs to me, I had helped students post personal items on SeeSaw, but I had never worked on the backside of it before this time.  I am continually blown away by the educational apps and programs that become available for classrooms.  It is wonderful to have all these resources at the tip of our fingertips.

I am excited about blogging itself, but  I am/was very imitated by the process of setting up the blog itself.  It took me a few tries and some frustration to get things looking the way I wanted them to and to ensure that I had everything set up, but I kept going and I am happy with the way that it has turned out so far.  I look forward to checking out your guys’ blogs and maybe even learn a few things from you as well.

 

 

Let’s Learn to Braid

For my learning project I have decided to learn how to braid. My hair skills are lacking immensely and I have always imagined my girls having the cutest braids in their hair, so I learned how to do a pretty single basic braid, usually one that I could pull back and add it to a pony tail so that they had a fancy addition to their regular top knot or pony that I could pull off.

For this project I am going to start out with the basics and get into a more trickier style-double dutch braid.  My daughter dances competitively and the hair style that is required is a double dutch braid with a fancy crossover bottom, like pictured here:

My biggest fear of my daughter changing dance studios, was this braiding business.  For the last couple years I have been paying people through cash and gift cards to braid her hair for all the important events, recently a friend has joined us at the same studio and she is a braiding goddess and she has been pulling me through.  This is the last year my daughter is dancing as she graduates this year so I thought it would be fun to be challenged to see if I can pull it off.

I have purchased a long hair mannequin head to use so that I am not having to use her for every practice time, lol.  I am going to watch some online tutorials to help me, the dance studio has sent us one to use as parents, but I have never actually opened it and watched it because the thought of it overwhelms me.  But I got this and I am up for the challenge!

Follow along and maybe you too will learn some braiding tips! I am sure there will be some super frustrating moments through this journey, but I am also hoping to have a really awesome outcome!  My mannequin has arrived and I am hoping to get started this week. Stay tuned….