I don't often endorse products or services, but I can't say enough about the app called "4 pics, 1 word." I started playing by myself because I love words and crosswords and all sorts of things like that.
Well, Squib saw it on the iPad and decided to take it on and it's developed into a family project. The results were, frankly, shocking! Once I worked with him and helped get his brain start to see the common thread in the four pictures shown...well, I have to say that he started to shock me. He was guessing words he'd never even spelled yet, so we got to practice some new words. We got to discuss multiple meanings of the same word. We got to agree and disagree and debate our points (this is actually important as well). We got to practice constructive ways to work out our frustrations.
In other words, it was ALL GOOD.
I was amazed, really, at what my seven-year-old learned to do in just one sitting. You could see his progress as we worked. It honestly shocked me. Of course, his malleable mind is probably more open to new ways of thinking than mine. He's very imaginative and artistic and can apply that to other subjects.
Altogether a wonderful app for family fun. Great learning device for children to start figuring out how to relate words and their uses. It presents itself as a game and they like the challenge. You will have to help out and maybe add some clues yourself on occasion, but, IMO, you should be sitting down with your kids and "playing" things like this with them anyway. Don't be afraid to tell them when you're stumped and think out loud so they know how you're going about finding solutions.
The greatest gift you can give your kiddos is to teach them how to think!
Scat
Friday, March 1, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Musical Angst of the Young
I was working around the Hobbit Hole this weekend and, as is usually the case, I had music playing. When Squib hears music he likes, he always comes skidding into the room and tells me to "put that on (his) playlist." Beanstalk is also a music hound, but there is no accounting for his tastes, to tell you the truth. If I listened to Andrea Bocceli, Sarah Brightman, and other classical/operatic music, then Beanstalk would be sitting two inches in front of the speakers.
So, I'm scrubbing the tub when I hear Squib pattering into the bedroom.
Sq: Mom! (Yes, he still yells it. I'm getting better at not leaping out of my skin.)
Moi: What?
Sq: That's the song from Iron Man! (I put my forehead on the rim of the tub and shake it.)
Moi: No, actually, it's not.
Sq: You're right. (He pauses to think.) It's from Megamind! Member?
He's not exactly wrong. Exactly.
Moi: The song is 'Back in Black' and it's 'from' ACDC. (I love looking at him when I tell him that the cool music he loves so much was actually cool music that his mother listened to way back when. The kid has great taste.)
Sq: No.
Moi: Yes.
Sq: Does anyone even write music anymore?
Moi: Of course they do.
Sq: But it all stinks!
I'm really starting to like this kid.
Scat
So, I'm scrubbing the tub when I hear Squib pattering into the bedroom.
Sq: Mom! (Yes, he still yells it. I'm getting better at not leaping out of my skin.)
Moi: What?
Sq: That's the song from Iron Man! (I put my forehead on the rim of the tub and shake it.)
Moi: No, actually, it's not.
Sq: You're right. (He pauses to think.) It's from Megamind! Member?
He's not exactly wrong. Exactly.
Moi: The song is 'Back in Black' and it's 'from' ACDC. (I love looking at him when I tell him that the cool music he loves so much was actually cool music that his mother listened to way back when. The kid has great taste.)
Sq: No.
Moi: Yes.
Sq: Does anyone even write music anymore?
Moi: Of course they do.
Sq: But it all stinks!
I'm really starting to like this kid.
Scat
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Would You Like Fries With That?
Yesterday I tackled every possible mass disaster we had around here that involved me except two. Every. Single. One. For two reasons:
1) I needed the space both real and virtual.
2) I wanted to fiddle around today. I'm running about the virtual climes about to have a skirmish, y'all and I need to be ready!!
The remaining two have the distinct air of needing a greater laying on of hands than I can provide. Plus the towering amount of success I had yesterday requires a certain amount of squelching ruin. I'd just as soon let that be balanced out in someone else's office. I was thinking that giving the success/disaster continuum some time to balance was well in order. Given that the remaining two items on the list involve my work station and server, I'm doubly cautious. And then...
Enter The Physicist:
TP: "So. Is Thor fixed?"
Moi: "Not at this moment, no." (After all, it is laying disassembled on the conference table.)
TP: "Oh. Ok, I thought you got all these things done."
Moi: "All the things I get paid to do, yes. Thor is next on the list." (He's nodding. Next means five minutes ago and he probably mistakes the fact that I'm huddling under an electric blanket for something it's not. Laziness versus SURVIVAL! It's damn cold.)
TP: "Anyway. After you get Thor and Scat up to speed, I need a webserver. I want to run it against php and, if possible, perl.
Scat pauses to do a quick inventory of The Scat Family Trio's hardware and software and all the applications we must and we'd "LIKE" to keep running. Not to mention the fact that we have so much data clogging the works that not one of these machines can even spot a turnip on a good day. She blinks....blink...blink blink.....blink.
Moi: "Would you like fries with that?" --(That's actually what I was thinking. Instead, I just gave a round-eyed....O..K.)
Maybe I should asked to be supersized.
Scat
1) I needed the space both real and virtual.
2) I wanted to fiddle around today. I'm running about the virtual climes about to have a skirmish, y'all and I need to be ready!!
The remaining two have the distinct air of needing a greater laying on of hands than I can provide. Plus the towering amount of success I had yesterday requires a certain amount of squelching ruin. I'd just as soon let that be balanced out in someone else's office. I was thinking that giving the success/disaster continuum some time to balance was well in order. Given that the remaining two items on the list involve my work station and server, I'm doubly cautious. And then...
Enter The Physicist:
TP: "So. Is Thor fixed?"
Moi: "Not at this moment, no." (After all, it is laying disassembled on the conference table.)
TP: "Oh. Ok, I thought you got all these things done."
Moi: "All the things I get paid to do, yes. Thor is next on the list." (He's nodding. Next means five minutes ago and he probably mistakes the fact that I'm huddling under an electric blanket for something it's not. Laziness versus SURVIVAL! It's damn cold.)
TP: "Anyway. After you get Thor and Scat up to speed, I need a webserver. I want to run it against php and, if possible, perl.
Scat pauses to do a quick inventory of The Scat Family Trio's hardware and software and all the applications we must and we'd "LIKE" to keep running. Not to mention the fact that we have so much data clogging the works that not one of these machines can even spot a turnip on a good day. She blinks....blink...blink blink.....blink.
Moi: "Would you like fries with that?" --(That's actually what I was thinking. Instead, I just gave a round-eyed....O..K.)
Maybe I should asked to be supersized.
Scat
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Chicken (that we don't have) Trauma
The First Rule of Green Acres: You don't talk about The Chicken.
The Second Rule of Green Acres: You don't talk about The Chicken.
"That" is a dog house. See? It looks like a dog house. It smells like a dog house. There is even a big water bowl large enough for two Rottweilers to drink for a week. Therefore, it must be a dog house. That thing there just works security.
Just stick your hand in there and she will gladly peck it off if you go near the water bowl. She may bite your hand just for daring to go in there in the first place. She is the defender of the c...age. Yes. And she is going to protect it right up until we find those dogs.
She has been with us for some time and we've kept her in various and sundry boxes, etc. They were hard to clean and didn't give her room to run around and roost or whatever it is that they like to do. Initially, she was a joke that started out with Buddy and his pitiful story about having to leave his baby chick at Gma Jewel's house when he was in grade school. So I've been on the hunt since then.
She's a Rhode Island Red and with any luck at all, bordering on a true--and I mean call the Pope--miracle, we'll have eggs!
As usual, actually touching, feeding, and/or risking my life in the care and feeding of anything beginning with homo sapiens (the odder ones) on down to...well, whatever...falls to me. So I corralled her into a box and grabbed her by the neck and legs which, oddly enough, she seems to like and brought her down to the new c...age...oop...thingie. She flapped and bock'd and flew at the chicken wire (it's just an adjective!) several times before she found a nice dark corner behind the dog house to hunch down in.
The only person she wishes to speak to is Squib. Of course. He walks up to the--fine it's a coop--coop and says (I'm not kidding)"
"Who loves, Squib??!!"
Only he screams it and turns "loves" into twenty syllables. I swear she walks out to see him every time. It's crazy.
The only thing crazier is that now Buddy and Squib both have decided that the work of one chicken cannot be done alone. Or she's lonely or now that we have the coop, we might as well have more chickens? So...Scat, just go get on the phone and find us some chickens.
Which is where all this started...
Scat
The Second Rule of Green Acres: You don't talk about The Chicken.
"That" is a dog house. See? It looks like a dog house. It smells like a dog house. There is even a big water bowl large enough for two Rottweilers to drink for a week. Therefore, it must be a dog house. That thing there just works security.
Just stick your hand in there and she will gladly peck it off if you go near the water bowl. She may bite your hand just for daring to go in there in the first place. She is the defender of the c...age. Yes. And she is going to protect it right up until we find those dogs.
She has been with us for some time and we've kept her in various and sundry boxes, etc. They were hard to clean and didn't give her room to run around and roost or whatever it is that they like to do. Initially, she was a joke that started out with Buddy and his pitiful story about having to leave his baby chick at Gma Jewel's house when he was in grade school. So I've been on the hunt since then.
She's a Rhode Island Red and with any luck at all, bordering on a true--and I mean call the Pope--miracle, we'll have eggs!
As usual, actually touching, feeding, and/or risking my life in the care and feeding of anything beginning with homo sapiens (the odder ones) on down to...well, whatever...falls to me. So I corralled her into a box and grabbed her by the neck and legs which, oddly enough, she seems to like and brought her down to the new c...age...oop...thingie. She flapped and bock'd and flew at the chicken wire (it's just an adjective!) several times before she found a nice dark corner behind the dog house to hunch down in.
The only person she wishes to speak to is Squib. Of course. He walks up to the--fine it's a coop--coop and says (I'm not kidding)"
"Who loves, Squib??!!"
Only he screams it and turns "loves" into twenty syllables. I swear she walks out to see him every time. It's crazy.
The only thing crazier is that now Buddy and Squib both have decided that the work of one chicken cannot be done alone. Or she's lonely or now that we have the coop, we might as well have more chickens? So...Scat, just go get on the phone and find us some chickens.
Which is where all this started...
Scat
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