Tag Archives: Family

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

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So we played a bit of Junior Pictionary the other night, and a fun time was had by all. Ashton and Jett thought it’d be fun to play kids vs adults, a challenge we were all too willing to accept. I was quite proud of my “wand” attempt:

Ashton managed to guess “chicken” from a drawing by Jett:

It was going alright for Suzanne’s drawings, until this picture. I had to remind her that “Ice Cubes” don’t necessarily sink to the bottom of the glass:

Jett somehow managed to guess “Tattoo” from a plain square box drawn by Ashton, but I think he might have been looking at my picture instead.

The first round was a close one but the adults won it by a slim margin. There were howls of how unfair it was to allow “Stamp Collection” when the clue was clearly “Stamp Collecting”. So in the second round the adults decided to forgo allowing the little indiscretions we’d witnessed from the kids in the first round. No more Mr Nice Guy for us; no more looking at the other team, we’d claim winners instead of allowing “draws” if the call was close, and the guess had to exactly match the clue. This was all much to Ashton’s dismay when she guessed “Sun” from one of Jett’s pictures, but it was disallowed. The clue on the card was very clear that she was supposed to guess “The Sun” and not just “Sun”.

Junior Pictionary is a great game for young ‘uns to develop their imagination and artistic talent, and should be part of every family games collection!

 

When a problem comes along You Must Whip It

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So Ashton learned a valuable lesson last night. Do not mess with Dad when drying the dishes!

Ashton thought she would try and start a bit of a tea towel fight with me rather than actually dry the dishes. If you asked the two other witnesses you’ll get three different stories (Suzanne, being a woman, will change her mind) but I’ll tell you how it really happened.

We traded a couple shots, nothing more than glancing blows. After one too many I decided we needed to focus on the task at hand. I could see Ashton readying for another shot so I decided a warning shot was needed.

Unfortunately for Ashton, she lunged into exactly the wrong spot at the wrong time and instead of a warning shot it became a perfectly timed THWACK across her thigh.

Hours later, when the crying had died down, a great big welt appeared on her leg very similar in appearance to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

Luckily its school holidays right now so she can’t show it for class news, but the first thing she did when we visited her grand parents was to proclaim to them what a mean Dad I am for mercilessly whipping her.

How do you explain Sep 11 to young kids?

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Promos for shows from different networks marking the 10 year anniversary of the Sep-11 attacks have started appearing on TV recently. This has led to my kids, who are under ten, asking questions.

What happened on Sep 11? Well, a bunch of bad guys hijacked some planes and crashed them into some buildings in America to try and kill as many people as they could.

This was ten years ago? Where were you? Yep, it was 10 years ago, a bit before you were born. Me and mum were getting ready to go to bed while it was actually happening. See, while it was early morning in the Eastern US, it was close to bedtime here. I remember seeing a news ticker on the bottom of the TV screen about a plane crash, but we shut the TV off to get an early night. This was when me and mum both worked at the same place. We didn’t see any of it until we woke up the next day. The clock radio went off at the appointed time, and they were talking about a plane crash. “Must have been the news from last night”, we thought. “Let’s turn on the news after breakfast before we go to work”. When we turned on the TV, it seemed every channel was carrying the same story. Two planes had crashed into the tallest buildings in New York called the World Trade Centre, and another into the Pentagon. And the World Trade Centre buildings had actually fallen down! Later we learned there was a fourth plane crash too.

Why did they try and kill those people? (OK, here we go…) You’ll soon start hearing a lot of people talking about this, and about related events that have happened in the 10 years following Sep 11. The short truth of the matter is that there are two reasons.

  1. They wanted American soldiers out of their Holy Lands, particularly military bases near Mecca and Medina which are Holy Cities.
  2. They wanted the American government to stop giving military support to Israel.
But why didn’t they just ask? I’m sure they did ask, and a number of times.They decided they only way that the Americans would listen was to do something like this; very spectacular and large.

When you say “they”, you mean Muslims? Well, yes. The guys who organised it and the guys who did it were all from a religion called Islam. People who follow Islam are called Muslims.

So, do Muslims try and kill people all the time? No, not at all. Most of the world’s billion or so Muslims are regular people like you and me trying to live the best life they can. But some decided to do something really evil and kill a bunch of people. They aren’t the Muslim leaders, and they don’t represent the rest of the Muslims.

Why did they choose those buildings? The name of the guy who organised the attacks was Osama bin Laden. Osama had tried to destroy the World Trade Centre before, by getting a guy to drive a truck loaded with explosives into the basement underneath one of the buildings. The hope was that the bomb would go off, and push one tower into the other and bring them both down. That didn’t work, but he really wanted to bring those buildings down because they were a symbol of American economic power. Two towers took two planes.  A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, which is a military base and symbol of American military power. Remember the fourth plane I mentioned? It was likely that this was supposed to crash into the White House which is where the President lives, and is a symbol of American politics and America itself. The fourth plane didn’t make it because the passengers fought back against the bad guys and the plane crashed into an empty field. They saved a lot of lives.

Then what happened? Well over the last ten years America has started wars with Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a bunch of other countries. Don’t ask me to explain all that right now. Maybe another time. I spent a few months in America the next year, just before you were born and because they used planes to crash into buildings and kill people it meant more security and longer lines waiting to get onto flights. My dad took a flight on Sep 11 2002 and was the only passenger on the plane! In May, they guy who organised the attacks was tracked down and killed in a town in Pakistan.

So it’s all over, right? They can stop the wars? Oh, I wish you were world leaders.

How have you explained Sep 11 to your young families? Leave a comment!

I’m being tormented by a heavenly body.

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Not cool, moon.

I’m being tormented by a heavenly body. I wish I could say that Jessica Alba has been tickling me constantly, but no such luck. It’s just the moon. Yep, Luna has been finding ways to make my life miserable.

We recently upgraded from Hillbilly style newspaper window coverings to ultra deluxe roller blinds. They were cheap and a snap to install, what with my mad handyman skills and awesome power drill.

But, as with any recessed curtain that doesn’t conform to micrometer tolerances, there’s a small gap on either side in between the fabric and the window frame. This gap, small though it may be, is like a red rag to a bull for the moon. It’s able to reflect sunlight over a distance of about 385000 km into a 2-3mm gap right onto my pillow, which is where I usually put my head when I’m trying desperately to sleep. 2mm over that distance is mind-bogglingly accurate.

Also, we have a wide but short window above our bed. Between the eves and the house next door there’s a tiny gap where if you put your head in just the right spot you can see the sky. That spot, again, happens to be my pillow, and I’m sure that the moon has been changing orbit so that it parks itself directly in front of that gap. It’s like being woken up by high-powered spotlights.

But the other night the moon found a third way to exploit the law of maximum inconvenience. We have a spare fridge in the garage, and I’m always wailing on Suzanne and the kids to “shut the freakin’ door” when you’ve finished getting drinks out. The other night, as we’re about to go to bed, Suzanne orders me into the darkened garage and says “Look at that. LOOK!” There was a thin sliver of light shining onto the garage door, perfectly placed so that it seemed to be coming from the fridge. “You left the door open!”

“No way,” I thought. I’m never that tardy. I’m the one who closes doors and turns off lights. I’m the only one who can be relied upon to maintain order in this chaotic household. I couldn’t have left the fridge door open, it’s such a rookie mistake.

Sure enough the door was closed. But where was the light coming from? Sure enough I looked back out through the darkened house and saw the laughing, taunting face of the full moon on the horizon. It had found the tiniest gap through the rear houses, clear through three doors inside the house and onto the garage door. It had conspired against me again and taken advantage of Suzanne’s desire to catch me out at my own game.

Curse you, moon!

9th Birthday: Why So Serious?

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We had Ashton’s 9th birthday party last night with a bunch of her friends coming around. The theme was “make overs” where they did their makeup and hair. There was lots of games and dancing and general shenanigans.

Ashton’s first attempt at doing her own makeup made her look like The Joker

Book week characters

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It’s Book Week at school, and the kids have to dress up as a book character.  Jett has gone for the more traditional Jedi, but we put a little more thought and effort into Ashton’s costume.

How not to enjoy Scitech Discovery Centre

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Scitech Discovery Centre

I took a day off work so we could all go to Scitech Discovery Centre in West Perth. It’s a great place for kids to learn about science in a fun, interactive environment. We’ve tried to take the kids there at least once a year so they can have fun and be stimulated. They keep good opening times, the cost is reasonable and it’s fairly easy to get to with City West Railway Station nearby. They have a core display that hardly changes involving various physics experiments and displays, plusanother area for “Feature Exhibitions” which seasonally rotate. In the past they’ve had features on Dinosaurs, on Microscopic Worlds, on Electricity and such.

This season, the feature is “Whodunnit?”, where you play the part of a forensic scientist to solve a murder mystery. It’s a great display, teaching about various forensic science principles like finger printing, chromatography, balistics, DNA, autopsies and even entomology where you determine the age of a corpse by measuring the size of the maggots found. The story goes that a body has been found on the Rhino enclosure at the zoo, and you’ve been called in to work out what happened to the poor soul who happens to be a zoo security guard. This was a great opportunity to get the kids excited about forensics and science. What kid doesn’t love maggots?

So we started out by having a look at the “body” which was a dummy covered with a sheet. There were posters around prompting you to look for clues like foot prints, finger prints, the bruising on the leg, the Mag-Lite torch with a huge dent in it and the broken watch. “The watch is broken. What do you think that might tell us?” I asked. The kids twigged on immediately and said that it might tell us what time he died. We had a little booklet to write clues and information in so they dutifully wrote it down along with other observations they made.

We then looked at a list of suspects and their background stories which might come in useful.

It turns out he’d been shot and the bullet had been recovered. I told the kids that we might be able to tell who’s gun the bullet came from because each gun puts marks on the bullet when it fires, and makes the bullet spin so that it doesn’t fly off in a random direction. They found this interesting so we went and had a look at the Ballistics display. Besides the bullet recovered from the victim (I was throwing these terms around like I was Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami) the police had already got a hold of the guns from each of the suspects and fired test bullets from them. All we had to do was match the pattern on the crime bullet to the pattern on one of the test bullets. Of course, these bullets were all in pristine condition and 20x original size to make things easier for kiddies. After studying the bullets for a few minutes we decided the crime scene bullet came from the gun owned by “Alice” (or whoever), so I asked if we should go and arrest Alice. I was able to teach them about not jumping to conclusions, because even though it was Alice’s gun she might not have been the one to fire it.

So this led onto another display at Alice’s house showing how we can reveal footprints and find fingerprints, which lead to other displays on taking footprint casts and using high tech computers that go beep to instantly find matching finger prints and on and on. Each of these clues worked either for or against each of the suspects until we ultimately found who we thought was involved.

It was a great day and we had a lot of fun. Ashton in particular really wanted to find all the clues and learn all she could. It might have been a bit much for Jett as he’s a bit younger.

But it was also frustrating, in a way, too. All I could see snotnosed kids mashing buttons. They’d walk up to the display, mash the first button they saw and wait for a light to turn on, all without reading the instructions or putting any thought into what they were interacting with. Depending on the display they might get a light to turn on or a dial to move but it’d all be over in seconds and they’d move onto the next button to mash.

And it wasn’t just the kids. The parents simply weren’t getting involved and taking the opportunity to teach their kids. I just wanted to scream at them, “Hey, your kid has the opportunity to learn something valuable here. All he needs is some guidance from you and his life will be enriched!” Whether the parents were taking a back seat because they weren’t comfortable or confident with the principles being taught, or because they were enjoying the convenience of their brat children giving them a moment’s respite from continual pestering is unclear. It just made me sad and angry that such good resources were going to waste when all the kids needed to do was lift their eyes and read the instructions and explanations written above each display.

Parents really need to get involved with their kids learning. They can’t teach themselves. Well, they can after a while but they really need to be taught how to learn. I have a couple books I’ve used which have some good ideas on how to teach and how to learn. There’s a couple by Edward de Bono, and one we’ve been using recently called How to Think Like Einstein: Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius.

So, if you’re a parent I can only beg and plead with you. You might not be a teacher, but your kids will learn more from you than from anyone else. You have a great responsibility, but it’s a good one to have.

Kids remember the darndest things

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We had a little trip on the weekend from my parents place out to the Busselton Jetty and accompanying Underwater Observatory. The jetty is 145 years old and, at almost 2km, is the longest timber-piled jetty in the southern hemisphere. The Underwater Observatory is like an aquarium in reverse letting you take a walk 8m below the waves to check out the sealife making it’s home in and around the jetty pylons.

While waiting for our scheduled tour, we had a walk around the local Pioneer Cemetery. For some reason the kids are obsessed with checking out names and dates on headstones in cemeteries, and always ask if we can stop and have a look if we have the opportunity. In that cemetery we found lots of names like “Bunbury” and “Bussell”, obviously after whom these South West towns were named after.

One caught my eye. The name on it was Samuel Isaacs and without reading the inscription, Suzanne and I both turned to each other and said “Wasn’t that the guy…?”. Turns out it was the guy, and we both remembered the story from our school days. Isaacs and another local girl by the name of Grace Bussell (after whom Gracetown is named) rode their horses through the surf into the ocean to rescue people from a sinking ship. They ferried people back to the safety of shore by dragging them behind their swimming horses. You can read more about it here.

Samuel Isaacs monument, Busselton

Samuel Isaacs monument, Busselton

On the way back the kids were disappointed to find that they brought the DVD covers but not the DVDs themselves so they couldn’t watch their favourite movie on the way home. You gotta hand it to them, though. It was a whole 6 minutes before the inevitable question came: “Are we there yet?”.

We stopped at a gas station for some road cokes (and chocolate milk for the kids) and while Suzanne way paying for them I dug out the trusty iPod as a backup with the intention of playing a little ZZ Top or Aerosmith. The Rolling Stones Forty Licks would surely get us home. When I plugged it in and pressed play, it was already playing Derezzed by Daft Punk from the Tron: Legacy sound track. Ashton said she wanted to listen to the entire album. Jett wasn’t so keen but it was he who left the DVDs behind so we let Ashton choose.

Ashton and Jett have seen Tron once only, and they really enjoyed it. Hey, it’s an enjoyable Disney movie so it’s understandable. But by listening to the soundtrack she was able to recall and describe pretty detailed parts of the movie. “This is the part where Sam meets Kevin Flynn for the first time. Only he’s CLU,” and “I remember this is where they are falling in the elevator,” and “This is where CLU gave his speech about “out there is our DESTINY“, but Kevin Flynn said the same thing about “in there” being our destiny at the start”. Derezzed is pretty much the signature track on the album, and instantly recognisable from the movie. But soundtrack albums also tend to have a lot of slower background atmospheric music, especially in scenes heavy on dialog. But Ashton knew pretty much where she was in the movie based only on seeing the movie and hearing the soundtrack once. Pretty impressive.