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.
Author Archives: Jonathan Sircy
Old School Gaming
For the past six months, my daughter’s 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.
Cousin Time
It strikes me how different my daughter’s experience is from my own childhood. Her cousins aren’t just summer visitors or holiday faces – they’re integral characters in her life’s story. She won’t have those isolated weeks of cousin time to look back on, but instead, a series of chapter-long adventures.
Beating the Heat like a Fat Cat
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 createdwith 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 HarryContinue reading “Summer Dispatch 1: So Much to Do”
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 meContinue reading “Spring Dispatch 2: The Time-Traveling Truck”
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 inContinue reading “Spring Dispatch 1: Spring Break 2023!”
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,Continue reading “Winter Dispatch 3: Transformers”
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 computerContinue reading “Winter Dispatch 2: Tuesdays with Stories”
Learning Together 