Introducing "Logan"

This dashingly handsome young man may look like Aseem, but he is actually Logan. Supriya, his Super-agent, gave him this personality. (Don't ask me where "Logan" came from!)

Drawing

Here's a gallery of our recent drawings:

Today Aseem, Supriya and I sat together and drew a dinosaur from the book "The Draw 50 Way" by Lee J. Ames. Aseem started drawing and got frustrated immediately. I told him that we are all learning to draw and it is frustrating in the beginning. I felt that I had to get involved. So we went thru the drawing line by line. I would draw one line, describe it a little (straight/ curved/ connecting this to that etc.) and Aseem & Supriya would copy it. It was fun and satisfying. I am going to offer a course like this next semester at our coop.

Last week Supriya started drawing circles with her new protractor and that inspired her to make them into faces. I thought it made a nice series, variations on a theme.

"Rearrange the Sticks" Puzzles

At the Museum of Science today I came across this young woman sitting at a card table near the door to the Mathematica room. She had a whole bunch of laminated "rearrange the sticks" puzzles and popsicle sticks. And I managed to crack all of them! I feel strangely proud of myself...

Check out this site. Tons of stick puzzles! I want to try them out with Aseem and Supriya. Supriya cracked the Tower of Hanoi puzzle again (in under 45 seconds for 5 discs, just for the record), as she had done last time. Another, older kid there took forever, 3 minutes and counting. She has a talent for these types of puzzles.

Boughten?!

You have seen the bumper-sticker: "Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids." What is also hereditary is using the ungrammatical-yet-useful words that your kids coin. The other day Manisha said to me, "This is something I shouldn't have boughten." I stopped, turned around to look at her and said, "Boughten? You too?" She said, "I know this is getting bad. Some day I am afraid I will say broughten in a meeting!" Tooken (as in the past participle of take) has already become a regular word in our household. And so the evolution of the English language continues...

Quit being What?!

Yesterday evening Aseem and Supriya were playing with the Mindstorms robot. Aseem had now been assigned the task of building "attachments" for the robot. They were playing and Aseem was alternately singing and making funny sounds. So Supriya yelled at him, "Aseem! Quit being a Snozzlefluffer!" In case you did not know, a Snozzlefluffer is someone who makes funny noises. Just making sure you stay current with today's yute...

Robot-building Continues

Supriya got up in the morning and went promptly to building a robot. By now she has spent a couple of hours (just today!) programming the robot. She has managed to make it go in a circle and go back and forth in a straight line, programming it all by herself. It is exciting to watch her play with the robot and make it do stuff. I am so glad we bought the kit.

Supriya Gets Mindstorms Robot

Supriya is a part of the First Lego League at Voyagers. They have been working on building a robot that does a certain number of preassigned tasks as part of the 2008 challenge. Manisha and I finally decided that it was time to buy her her own Mindstorms NXT kit. I gave it to her today and she was ecstatic, jumping around and hugging me and thanking me a million times. When we got home she got straight to work and built a robot. Then she uploaded the programming software onto my laptop and programmed it to move. It did not work too well. Then Manisha wanted her to build a robot from the manual, but Supriya thought that was boring. Of course she wants to build her own creation and program it to do cool stuff. She doesn't realize that she needs to walk before she can run. Granted she has done a programming course with the NXT, but she has a lot to learn - patience, most of all!