technonaturalist

[pretty much all the images I had in here were hotlinked and they’ve all vanished because they’re extremely outdated models by this point]

The “Primer”: a fictional computer (“book”) in a work of fiction called “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson. It is carted about by the child and absorbs information from its surroundings and uses that information to construct appropriate learning experiences for the child in a narrative fashion.

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Been a bit of a lazy week this week.

6yo made a (very) short story book with illustrations and a shape book to help 4yo learn his shapes. Bigs did their 10-12yo maths books and were either horribly distracted, not in the mood or they are starting to find the work harder as both only managed to get through one section before the endless fidgeting and recalcitration set in. As I watched 8yo prowling up and down the house while he worked out multiplication problems in his head I thought perhaps it was a good thing that he wasn’t going to school at this stage as he’d drive a teacher batty with his shark-like need to be always moving.

Dear Google

bek is part of my real name. I am currently running under the assumption that it was either my initials (of my real surname) or my handle (ryivhnn, which I use on Youtube, Artician, deviantART and as a username on the Diaspora pod I’m on, though the display name there is bek) that triggered WASPobot as I hope your code isn’t so defective that you would ping me for a string that was entirely your construction (all I did was choose that particular display).

Now with more detail and split into National Curriculum subject areas as best I can manage (because I fail at reductionism and bureaucracy seems to fail at holism; with some luck perhaps we shall collide in a catalystic rather than confrontational manner somewhere in the middle, and bonus if this helps someone somewhere in some way).

The players are an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy. Bookwork (which includes using the computer programs) is officially done weekly and is tied to their pocket money, they can do extra for fun and profit, and they don’t get paid if they don’t do the work. The 4yo doesn’t get pocket money and isn’t required to do the bookwork though he will usually do some if everyone else is.

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Last week and a bit have been slack and uncoordinated partially due to Easter and mostly due to the sleeping pattern going seriously out of whack resulting in myself and the kids going to bed way too late (me because I was staying up late to finish stuff off and also to make sure the bigs were asleep before turning out their light, and them because I have no idea).

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The slogan is from an xkcd shirt.

And that was pretty much what happened today. I managed to convince the kids to go play outside. Even 6yo who “hates going outside” (or so she claimed today) decided to go out after her little brother (who had been playing inside with her) decided he was going to go outside. She found her “dinosaur stomach” and started making energon stew for the Autobots. I had a flash of “why the hell not” and started bringing out stuff.

I’m really glad I’m doing Red first. After spending six months of manual labour on his horns (because I have no idea how to magically make it work) the other characters (none of which have horns that twist this violently) will seem rapid by comparison.

I also don’t think I’m going to forget to model the subpatch cage as close as I can before freezing. Fortunately for me Red’s body structure is not too dissimilar in proportion from the default Dragonkin’s, I did end up spending a lot of time on his face trying to get his nose and chin right.

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Additional usage for Minecraft: bribery.

8yo asked for Minecraft after lunch, I told him I wanted them to get maths bookwork done first. They very enthusiastically grabbed their books and we got cracking. 8yo leaped through most of his questions with little drama except he wanted to work out everything in his head and was getting very frustrated when he couldn’t. I once more recommended trying to memorise the times tables at the front of the book and told him there was exactly nothing wrong with using the multiplication grid. He seems to think it’s beneath him at the moment. 6yo is finally starting to get place values. She had a hissy fit and refused to do her book initially because “it’s not fun”. When we started drawing caterpillars with ten segments and eggs on the whiteboard insead she started getting it, so instead of lots of sticks we drew caterpillars and eggs in the workbook as well. 8yo started struggling after a while so I let him just go to the end of the section he was on before we called it quits.

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Big kids watched several episodes of Backyard Science and consolidated some stuff from previous Scitech lessons and conversational learning. 6yo has started adding bicarb to her cordial to make it fizzy.

Maths bookwork was a complete write-off partly due to 4yo being rather whiney-clingy all week and partly due to the big kids’ quiet refusal (mostly by way of procrastination, 8yo pointedly ignored me and remained glued to Minecraft videos while I was calling him, 6yo eventually came but every time she encountered something she couldn’t do, her attention would wander quite obviously whenever I was trying to explain it to her, and nothing was going in). Tried tackling it the following morning and failed miserably. I told them they weren’t getting paid for it and told them to go sort out their money into what was staying in their wallets for casual spending, what was being saved up in money boxes for slightly bigger purchases and what was going into the bank for saving, and to find out how much they had while they were about it.

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Week started off pretty slow, with the kids already counting down the days to the next science lesson at Scitech. 8yo drew a 9x9 chart and then added an extra row to make 90, and titled it “Christmas Island chart” as it’s supposed to be to count down the days til we go to Christmas Island, or at least til Aunty Sprat gets here on holiday as we’re supposed to be going back with her (and I can say that now as it’s no longer a surprise and the parents know we’re coming). 4yo of course tore it accidentally.