Please Help Me with this Question

Okay, so this has nothing to do with early childhood development, but I hope you can help me with it. If you’re a regular reader, you will have noticed the changes made to Figur8 and Babylicious over the past month. I have been trying to improve the site to by organising things a little better and to speed things up – like the website loading time. Unfortunately, we haven’t had too much luck in the “speeding things up” department although I have done as much as I can without taking the next step which is going to be very messy and very painful – in other words, I’d like to avoid that if I can.

So far the loading time has been okay for me, but I do realise that we might not all be on the same internet speed so what might seem okay for me might actually be quite slow for you. It would help me a lot in deciding if I need to take the next step if you could answer the following two quick questions. I greatly appreciate your time and assistance.

Thank you for helping to better this site.


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Games for Teaching Physics, Creative Thinking and Problem Solving

Some time back (probably about a year or two – I forget now), hubby got a touchscreen for his desktop at work. It was pretty cool because he had the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 on it, which has:

  • Microsoft Blackboard
  • Microsoft Garden Pond
  • Microsoft Rebound
  • Microsoft Surface Globe
  • Microsoft Surface Collage
  • Microsoft Surface Lagoon

If you haven’t seen it yet, you should check out this demo to see how cool it is:

Okay, I’m digressing… What caught my attention was the Blackboard Physics game. Watch it here:

Although this game is probably too advanced for Aristotle, I figured it was a good one we could work on together to teach him about finding solutions to problems.

When we got the iPad, I tried to find a similar game but was unsuccessful so I forgot all about it until Aristotle was playing another game with a similar concept on a borrowed Galaxy Note. The game is called Crayon Physics (and yes, it’s available for the iPhone, too) and it looks like this:

After discovering Crayon Physics for the iPhone, I found an iPhone equivalent for Blackboard Physics – TapuGon Gravity:

The game is slightly different but the concept is still the same. Other similar games:

What I like about these games is that they promote creative thinking and problem solving skills. Most of these games might be too advanced for younger children (especially once they get past the easier levels), but perhaps we’ll be able to find something with a similar concept that is more appropriate for the younger children. Anyone seen anything? Hope you can share your apps in the comments section – thanks!


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Life Skills: Accepting Unwanted Gifts Graciously

Okay, so I’ve been feeling a little down in the dumps regarding Aristotle and his less than stellar behavioural reports from school. As always, whenever the kids misbehave, everyone looks at Mum – especially when you’re the SAHM who’s looking after the kids full time. Who else could possibly be responsible for their attrocious manners and horrible behaviours? It doesn’t matter that Aristotle is only 4 (soon to be 5) and Hercules is 2. The fact remains that the future of how they turn out to be looms like a cumulonimbus cloud over my head. If they turn out to be juvenile delinquents and social deviants, the finger will invariably point at me. I don’t care how many denials there are that this is no so – the thought bubble will remain. Nobody needs to vocalise it, the looks alone will be enough.

So I was very grateful when I came across this blog on my BFF’s facebook page:

Amber Dusick is an amazing woman and mother and above all very, very funny! Don’t believe me, just head over to her blog Parenting Illustrated with Crappy Pictures. I have been reading through a few of her most recent blog posts and I feel almost like my old self again (thank you Amber!). Her illustrated stories about her life with her two boys is so analogous to mine that I am reminded how easy it is to forget that we aren’t the only ones experiencing these problems with our children (even if it seems like we are sometimes).

For instance, Amber recently taught her older son about being gracious when receiving a gift you don’t like and it reminded me of a similar phase we had been going through with Aristotle and his “brutal honesty” about the gifts he receives. The irony was that he used to be quite polite about it when he was younger. Here’s an exchange between him and his aunt:

Aunt: Would you like to try my biscuit?
Aristotle: Okay. *Takes a bite*
Aunt: Would you like some more?
Aristorle: No thanks.

Pretty good for a kid, I thought – polite but it gets to the point without having to say those ugly words: “I don’t like it.”

Somewhere along the way, he forgot his manners and started responding with, “I don’t like it.” Or perhaps he never had them to begin with and he just scored the right answer by accident because it seems “appreciation deficiency” is a common syndrome in children. Anyway, it’s a tough area because children simply speak the truth and here we are telling them to lie because the truth hurts. Most adults end up accepting the gift a little too graciously – “Oh thank you! It’s lovely!” – NOT! The problem with being too gracious is that you end up getting something similar because now the other person thinks you like that sort of thing. Kids are smarter in this respect. They don’t want the crappy present and they make sure they never get another one like it again.

But the point remains that one of the goals of parenting is to teach our children manners and learning how to accept gifts we don’t like without blurting out how much we hate it is part of that. But we also don’t want to teach our children to lie. So how do you get around this very awkward and sticky situation?

These are my rules for accepting gifts for Aristotle:

  1. Always say “thank you” even if you don’t like it because it’s polite.
  2. It isn’t necessary to say you don’t like it because it could hurt the other person’s feelings. As long as they don’t ask you what you think of the present, the best answer is to keep quiet about what you think about it – technically a lie by omission but let’s not dwell on it.
  3. If you get forced into an answer then the truth comes out (well, they asked for it!) but we try to soften the blow a little by saying we don’t really like it rather than “I HATE IT!”

I guess this is just one of those grey areas in life where there are no right or wrong answers – merely the answers that fit best with your own morals and values and the order of importance that you place upon each.

To avoid embarassment, it is probably best to tackle this issue in private before an incident arises and talk about being gracious when receiving gifts we don’t like. And if you do get caught by surprise, try not to be too hard on your child because he doesn’t know the etiquette of receiving gifts. I do think we tend to over-react when we’re embarrassed by our childrens’ responses.

In the continuing journey of life, our children have a lot to learn as they try to decipher these cryptic, unspoken rules of society. As parents, we have just as much to learn about how to teach these rules and how to deal with the consequences when we forget to prompt our children before hand. Children will slip up and we will look like bad parents but as long as we’re constantly trying to correct it and striving to do good by our children, I think it’s all anyone can ask for – don’t you?


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Is Cognitive Advancement Linked to Juvenile Deliquency?

Since Aristotle started school, it seems we have had more than our fair share of meetings with his teachers to address his misdemeanours at school. All in all, I think he’s been to the school’s office more times in his short experience of school than I have in all my schooling years. It’s a scary thought for a parent considering how many more years of school he has in store.

It was recently suggested to me that this is happening because Aristotle is too advanced for most of his peers at school which tends to isolate him. In turn, he expresses his frustrations through these minor transgressions. The solution that was suggested to me was to hold back his mental development and stop whatever activities I do with him outside of school. The belief is that once the other children catch up with him and he becomes “more like them”, these disciplinary issues should right themselves.

I have to say that I cringed when I heard that. The very idea of holding back a child’s development so that he can be “more like everyone else”? I was speechless. Would you tell a child to stop swimming so that the other children can catch up to him?

As much as I dislike dwelling on genetics and in-born talent (what we are is 50% nature and 50% nurture and I usually tend not to focus on the former because it seems pointless to waste my thoughts on that which I cannot change), it is evident that Aristotle’s talent is his acuity. By acuity I do not mean that he started talking early, or that he has always been very articulate for his age, or even that he reads well for his age. By some of these measures, I would say that Hercules is ahead of him, and yet, I do not feel that Hercules has the mental acuity of Aristotle. There is a certain quality to Aristotle’s mind that I cannot describe adequately and I know that to deny his development is to deny him the opportunity to hone that talent much as we would be denying the swimmer by asking him not to swim.

Besides, even if I stopped all his developmental activities, I do not believe that it would be the answer to his disciplinary problems at school. I will not go so far as to say that there is no link between the two but regardless of whether there is a link or not, the answer is definitely not holding a child back.

It reminds me of an argument I used to hear regarding early learning that goes something like, “Oh, if your child learns all this before school, won’t he be bored at school?” Why are we trying so hard to make our children fit into a preset mould, especially if it means compromising their development? That’s the worst reason I have ever heard for not wanting our children to do any special pre-school activities. Even the misconceived notion that teaching children math and reading and other subjects in infancy or toddlerhood is damaging is not as bad. At least this is a real perceived reason even if it misconceived.

Aristotle may be cognitively advanced, but emotionally, he is still a child of his physical age. Just because I was never in the school’s office as much doesn’t mean that I was a “normal” child and Aristotle “abnormal”. If the stories are true, it would appear that hubby spent a great deal of his childhood in mischief making. Perhaps Aristotle is simply more like his father in this regard and this is just something I’m going to have to learn to deal with. For what it’s worth, Aristotle has never had a repeat offense after we have “dealt with the issue”, he just comes up with new ones. Is it fair to say that we are making progress as far as disciplinary measures go? After all, if hubby became a law-abiding citizen, a good and kind husband, and a responsible father in spite of all the trouble he used to get into, surely there is hope still for my son.

These are just my thoughts. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments – I welcome them. I know there are many other parents reading this with cognitively advanced children in school so I hope you can share your experiences and your thoughts about this particular subject.


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Super Easy Make Your Own Volcano

Aristotle and I have been reading a couple of books about volcanos:

It’s part of my effort to expose Aristotle to a broader range of subjects beyond dinosaurs (although the hook I used was that volcanoes were around during the time of the dinosaurs).

After reading about volcanoes, it seemed like a fun idea to create a model volcano so he could see a physical model in action. Of course with youtube, video clips of volcanoes in action are not hard to find, like this one:

You can also watch documentaries on the subject, like this one by the National Geographic:

But it really isn’t the same as having a hands-on volcano activity.

I was just contemplating getting Aristotle a volcano making kit like the one by Kidz Labs. The kit is recommended for children age 7 years and up, I figured with parental supervision, Aristotle could work on it with me. After all, it’s only baking soda and vinegar – nothing particularly hazardous.

Then Aristotle came up with his own volcano design using a recycled bottle a little imagination. The best time to do this is during bath time because it can get messy.

What you will need:

  • Large empty recycled plastic bottle (a 1 liter bottle is good)
  • A little liquid soap
  • Lots of water

Instructions:

  • Put a little soap into the empty bottle.
  • Put the bottle under the tap.
  • Turn on the tap (water pressure must be sufficiently high).
  • Wait for the water to fill up the bottle and the bubbles to explode out of the top.

Okay, so it’s probably not quite as impressive as the Volcano Kit from Kidz Labs, but it’s cheaper, cleaner, faster, and much, much easier to implement. Plus, you can do it over and over again on any given day and the kids will never get sick of watching the bubbles spew out of the top. And well, let’s face it, I’d probably be the one doing most of the work if we had bought the Volcano Kit. So good thinking Aristotle, you just saved Daddy RM30 and Mummy a lot of extra work.


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