We limit screen time in our family to two hours per day. This means that there is a designated period for it. For our children, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. is “movie time.”
They watch a movie or a show that I already screened in advance. Lately, it has been “Spiderwick Chronicles” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
We have soon-to-be seven-year-old twins in the house, who are growing more interested with technology every single day.
For this entry, allow me to share about our daughter Antoinette’s curiosity with Facebook Messenger.
Let me state the obvious: I have feisty and intelligent children. Antoinette is especially sassy. She’s top of her class and reads books no regular six-year-old child does.
She now hosts her own cooking show, Inside Casa Ruffolo Cucina with Antoinette, on our YouTube Channel, The Reading Ruffolos. It has been more than a year of constant hounding before I finally had the time to help her out with this cooking show project.
Because of this, we’re getting more attention. I show her people’s responses about her cooking and her hosting. I constantly remind her to be humble and gracious — and that’s important to study and learn more so she can share more.
She knows the password to open my phone. It’s not scary. I anticipated it happening. I took it as an opportunity to teach her the value of privacy.
She is interested in the shows that I love particularly NCIS (the one with Mark Harmon) primarily because she wants to be a forensic scientist like the character Abigail “Abby” Sciuto played by actress Pauley Perrette.
Recently, her interest turned to using Facebook Messenger for… chatting. It’s what we use to we communicate with her Uncle Hendrix and close friends.
Noting how I limit screen time and my hesitation in exposing them to too much gadget at this stage, I thought about how I can transform this new interest into something productive.
So I said that she can borrow my phone if she will chat with my friends by writing with correct spelling and proper grammar.
Oh, how she loved it!
On a Wednesday night, she chatted with my brother, her godfather/my best friend, and the Basadours, the group of volunteer storytellers that I am part of.
I reviewed her online conversations with them and up to this hour, I’m so happy about her progress.
How does this work?
She sends a greeting first and the other party responds. She then types questions, waits, and then reads the response. When she doesn’t know the spelling of the word, she asks me. When she has difficulty expressing the sentence, she asks me. When she is not sure about how to express her feeling appropriately, she consults me..
We’re working on improving her punctuation usage but other than that, I am proud. She can spell words and write sentences better than many adults.
So here goes another Mommy Tip on how we can use technology to teach our children to become better at spelling and grammar: use Messenger.
Take note that these are supervised chat sessions. When she was chatting with the people I mentioned above, Ate Joy was beside her to make sure that there are no online predators or posers whose names just pop up in the Messenger app. It is a good idea to be there so you can assist your child when he/she asks for the spelling of certain words or the correct way of asking and responding (to) questions. Also limit chat sessions between 30 minutes and hour. Our sessions usually last an hour because Antoinette still types slowly.
I will proceed with asking some of my family members and friends to chat with her so she will improve her written communication skills.
Any more suggestions on how I can make this experience more enriching for her?
