We’ve been Unplugged!

Greetings! We’re back from a week of being “unplugged”. We didn’t go anywhere, Hubby just decided that it would be interesting to unplug from all computers, television, and video games for one week. The only exceptions were Typing and German which are both taught on the computer. (We did cut out all other educational and edutainment programs for the week.)

A few things we discovered:

1. We use the computer WAY more than I realized for education. If the kids have a question about how a spider eats, we use the Internet. Can pyramids be found in China?…..mommy has the answer in a moment. I began to worry that my real IQ would show and that I would lose all “authority” this week. No worries, I explained to the little darlings that in “the olden days” we used to have to make a list of questions, drive to the library, and then find a book or encyclopedia on that topic to answer our questions. Their response, “That’s CRAZY, we wouldn’t have time for half the stuff we wanted, THAT way!”

2. We desperately need to update our board games. (Either that, or all board games are very lame and not very engaging.) Most of our games are for the preschool set….has it been that long!? We like Uno and Poker, but beyond that, I’d rather stare at a wall. Anybody have some good game suggestions that can be played by ages 6 to adult?

3. I like not knowing what made the news each day. It makes for a much calmer household.

4. Without tv and computers, we go to bed shortly after the children. We were actually averaging 8 hours of sleep!

5. A trip to the local library was a must! All of us did a LOT of reading. Unfortunately, finding QUALITY children’s books at the library was much harder than it used to be in Michigan. Maybe it’s the state, or that the library is smaller, or that the town caters primarily to tourists. But when did libraries start stocking such politically correct or mind numbing drivel! Again, the ability to research the books we wanted prior to going and find out which location carried them would have helped. I will NOT be letting the kids just pull things of the shelves anymore. YUCK!

6. Motivation to work in a timely manner was harder to come by on cold/rainy days when there was no chance of swimming after completing schoolwork for the day.

7. Without noise and “stuff” to occupy our time, we were more reflective and talked more with each other. The kids loved to swamp daddy with their stories and commentaries on things, not so sure if he enjoyed it as much, after a hard day of work!

Over all it was interesting. Sarge was not fazed and life went on as he’s into Legos right now. The Gremlin was laying on the floor by day two muttering something about, “living on a hostile planet with nothing fun to do.” (That was short lived…..whiners were assigned jobs to cure their boredom!) The Imp missed her edutainment games and movie night the most. Hubby missed his news and I missed the quick reference aspect. (Life without Mapquest is a scary thing!)

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