Last night, while tucking the Free-Ride offspring into bed:
Dr. Free-Ride: Tomorrow is Groundhog’s Day.
Elder offspring: I really hope the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow this year so we can have an early spring.
Younger offspring: Yay! Spring could start tomorrow!
Dr. Free-Ride: Hold on now, “early spring” doesn’t mean spring will start immediately, it means —
Younger offspring: I really want spring to start early because then my birthday will come sooner!
Dr. Free-Ride: OK, you guys realize that what the groundhog sees has no impact whatsoever on how many calendar days are left until May, don’t you?
Elder offspring: Not at bedtime we don’t.
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Category Archives: Kids and science
Friday Sprog Blogging: Just Gimme Some Truth*
Since the internets are abuzz with discussion about truth, I decided to get some input from the smartest members of my household.
Dr. Free-Ride: Wakey wakey!
Younger offspring: (groggily) I don’t want to get out of bed yet.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s fine. Can I ask you some questions?
Younger offspring: (simultaneously nodding and burrowing further under the covers) Mmm hmm.
Dr. Free-Ride: If I ask you some questions, do you think you can tell me your answers?
Younger offspring: If I know what the answers are I will.
Friday Sprog Blogging: what’s for dinner?
The past week or so, I’ve been on a little bit of a cooking jag. This has not gone unnoticed by the Free-Ride offspring.
Elder offspring: Why have you been making us so many yummy things to eat this week?
Dr. Free-Ride: I guess I’m going to miss cooking for you while I’m away at the conference this weekend.
Younger offspring: (with a melodramatic look of anguish) You won’t be here this weekend!
Elder offspring: But since your shuttle to the airport comes at 4:20, we can see you tomorrow when we come home from school and before we go to ice skating.
Dr. Free-Ride: Uh, no, my shuttle comes at 4:20 AM.
Younger offspring: There’s a 4:20 AM??
Dr. Free-Ride: I was surprised at that, too!
Friday Sprog Blogging: a child’s garden of empiricism.
We have been dancing near record low temperatures in these parts. It’s not quite as cold as the dark side of the moon, but it is cold enough that the water in the garden hoses is frozen in the morning and there’s frost on the ground. (Also, cold enough that ice needs scraping off the windshield in the morning, which has led me to the discovery that, in the absence of a proper ice-scraper, a Safeway card does the job.) Still, in anticipation of our traditionally temperate late-winter weather here by the San Francisco Bay, we’ve been planning some garden-related fun for the Free-Ride offspring. As you might guess, a lot of the plans have a science-y angle to them.
Friday Sprog Blogging: sunrise, sunset.
This morning while I was ensconced in a shower, the younger Free-Ride offspring decided it would be a good idea to bound in and wake my better half.
Younger offspring: Good morning! Look at the sun.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: (looking around groggily) What sun? It’s still dark.
Younger offspring: I know. “Good morning! Look at the sun” is from a song.*
Strategy is different when playing with a five-year-old.
The elder Free-Ride offspring has lately gotten into playing “poison”, a nim-type game for two players. You start with a pile of twelve items that are the same and one item that is different (the poison). Each turn, players can remove either one or two items from the pile. The object of the game is to leave your opponent with no option but to take the poison.
In theory, it is possible to win the game every single time if your turn is second. (Thanks to MarkP for straightening me out on this one.) What the elder Free-Ride offspring has discovered in playing with the younger Free-Ride offspring, however, is that there are circumstances in which a five-year-old will find it psychologically impossible to exercise a winning strategy even when given the second turn.
Friday Sprog Blogging: Air and Space highlights.
Younger offspring: (climbing on a bed) Let’s launch a mission to space!
Dr. Free-Ride: OK.
Younger offspring: (using a blanket and a pillow to fashion a helmet) I’m going to put on a space-suit.
Dr. Free-Ride: Are you planning a space-walk on this mission?
Younger offspring: Yep. If astronauts need to pee in the middle of a space-walk, they can go right in their space-suits. But we’re just playing, so I won’t do that.
Dr. Free-Ride: Imagine my relief.
Friday Sprog Blogging: cross-country travel and kid circadian rhythms.
The Free-Ride family was only delayed by about 8 hours in getting from California to Maryland. This was no thanks to the very unhelpful America West/US Airways ticket agent at San Francisco, who, after we waited in the line to get to the podium for nearly 4 hours, thought to put our luggage on the red-eye from Las Vegas but had to be pressed to put us on standby for the same flight rather than offering as our only option the connection-you’re-about-to-miss-but-24-hour-later flight. Luckily, Las Vegas Customer Service Guy Patrick C. got us the relevant flight information that the evil-SFO-agent did not, and we managed to make it onto the red eye, or we’d be taking off just about now rather than settling in for our first night at Super Sally’s house.
Anyway.
So, there’s a kids and science related angle to this tale of woe, in which I seek information from the scientifically educated hive-mind:
Brain-Friendly Giftables, part 4: Measuring devices.
Brains enjoy getting information about the world around them. Although our sense organs do a pretty good job of keeping the data flowing to the brain, the occasional sense-organ-extending measuring device can add a whole new set of experiences for our brains to chew on.
We wrap up the brain-friendly giftables list with a selection of measuring devices. A (lab) notebook or sketch pad would make a fine accompaniment to any of these.
Friday Sprog Blogging: matter for kindergarteners.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half taught the younger Free-Ride offspring’s kindergarten class about matter this week. It was a lesson that included a working definition, some hands-on explorations of the properties of different sorts of matter, and a little magic.