iPad? Maybe when he’s five.

Apr 042010
 

Kind of drawn to the iPad and not just because of the Modern Family tie-in.  Though everyone talks about what it’s not replacing, and I agree with them, it doesn’t replace my laptop or my Blackberry, but no one has mentioned that it’s a great replacement for the OLPC that we have.

I mean, I love the idea behind the OLPC but it just didn’t work. The keyboard was flakey and the touchpad was worse. Making the whole thing rough to use. Kids don’t have that kind of patience to figure out how exactly you need to slide your finger to move the mouse.  Or at least, mine didn’t.  And yeah, there’s no Flash on that thing either, unless you wanna spend 2 evenings trying to reimage the thing from a USB stick.

So given that Sal’s got an XP box into some crazy state with a very unhappy active desktop, and that the OLPC doesn’t quite cut it, plus he’s got a huge interest in his mother’s iPhone, the iPad seems great for him as a device.

  • Reading.  The dude is reading more and more now, and to have his library contained in one device makes road tripping seem that much more sane. There’s a version of Cat in the Hat on the iPhone that is interactive and encouraged him as he worked his way through the words.  Loved it.
  • Math games. When he’s got no pure game time left, he’ll play the math games.  Not as fun as the other games, but he is working on his math.
  • Memory games, puzzles, logic games, coordination games…even the games that are more entertainment than educational, will have some beneficial side effects.  I’ve seen apps that mimic a piano…and I’m sure there’s gotta be a chess tutorial app out there too.
  • There is no OS; in the traditional sense. No file system, no command lines, nothing for him to really jack up, inadvertently.
  • He’s not going to be typing novels yet, so I’m not worried about the keyboard issues.
  • The sketchpad apps with infinite crayons again make those roadtrips seem more manageable.  Plus you get to save the result digitally to share with others instead of worrying about Dad ripping butcher paper up.  Or he could narrate a slideshow of his to his grandparents.
  • Wi-Fi is good enough for him.  I imagine when we’re out, there should be enough on the iPad to keep him entertained, and able to share his works with others easily.

Now, there isn’t the collaborative aspect that the OLPC had, but we weren’t going to be able to really utilize that anyway. And probably still would not want that for a 4 or 5 year old.

To get the OLPC I think was 400 – buy one to give and keep one.  So we’ll just wait it out, and then when the 2nd generation comes along, I think we’ll have our OLPC replacement…

Choose your own adventure.

Aug 052009
 

Remember those books?  I think it was the only time I “lost” a book from the library and couldn’t return it.  The one where you’re a spy.

In an effort to read more to Sal, I picked up some of these little gems from Amazon.  They have a younger kids version of the books and so far I think they’re a hit.  Like the reviews of the books say, there are some strange endings to some of the paths (like spending a good portion of your life in jail, or getting stuck on a robot planet without ever seeing your parents again), but that hasn’t been too much of an issue. (Update – while making those amazon links, I stumbled upon this choose your own adventure…which seems like it strays a little from their typical recipe.  Browse through the first few pages and tell me if this is the choose your own adventure genre you grew up with – there isn’t a decision point in the first couple of pages, but that first page definitely stands out…I might be getting myself a choose your own adventure book too now.)

What is strange is that Sal will choose the “right” thing to do. He hears a little magical “help!” coming from his sand castle late at night and you ask him if he’s going to go investigate the castle right away or if he’ll wait till morning and he’ll think about it and then wait until morning.  And if he’s got the choice of going to do something himself right away or to go get help or his parents, he’ll go find help or his parents.

So I’m pleased that he does the “right” thing – cause I’m superimposing that onto how he’d react to that situation in real life.  Considering how long he thinks about some of his choices, I think he does take it seriously.

But I’m a little sad that he’s not more “adventurous”.  We haven’t been able to find the sea monster in some lake, cause we keep going the safe route. Though, I don’t want to push him that way and then end up having a kid that is out of control in real life.  I like knowing he’s not going to run out of the house in the middle of the night cause he thinks he hears something.

So we’ve had to swap roles.  Sometimes I get to choose the adventure and my character is the one that ends up being the reckless one and he hears about the adventures that I go on (I’m the one that went to jail, not him.  He found some emeralds that were stolen years ago and returned them to the police…)  Though sometimes I end up with happy endings too.  Ahem.

So overall, I think it’s been a success.  He leafs through the books while I’m at work and he knows that there are pages/pictures of the story that he wants to get to, but we don’t always figure out the path.  When he learns how to reverse engineer the story, I’ll be impressed.

I think this week, while his mom is away, we’ll work on writing our own choose your own adventure book for her to read…

Update on the experiment…

May 292009
 

So I guess the original experiment is 12 minutes long.

Sal lasted 12 minutes without any trouble. In fact, after I gave him the 3 additional Skittles, he asked, “What do we do now?”

I said he could eat them…or he could wait longer and get 6 more Skittles.

So we’re at minute 16 for phase 2. Or minute 28 total. I figure 30 minutes total is a good ending point. At 12 Skittles (and I’ll probably eat a couple to limit his sugar intake) it is a pretty cheap “quiet time” bill to pay…

Home psych tests based on lunchtime conversations.

May 252009
 

EJ brought up at lunch one day about how there is some test where the psych folk with drop 3 M&Ms infront of a kid and tell them that they are going to leave the room for a bit.  They also say that when they return, if the kid hasn’t eaten the 3 M&Ms the kid will get 3 more.  They don’t tell the duration of time that they will be gone for.

At some age, kids learn about weighing instant gratification with patience and delayed gratification and greed?

So I was supposed to put Sal through this test.

Finally did it.

Sal sat like a happy camper, all quiet and perfect and charming in his chair with 3 Skittles in front of him for about 5 minutes while I just looked stuff up on the computer in a different room.

I went back with 3 more Skittles and he was happy to see me and happy to get his additional 3 Skittles.

He then started to eat them.  I asked for the purple one and he even shared with me.

It would have been perfect, if I didn’t over hear him tell his mother, as I was leaving the room “I didn’t really want the purple one anyway.”

I wonder what he did to it (it was one of the 3 that was with him alone for a while…)

Water Gun fun…

May 062008
 

Though, it’s not fun in the traditional sense. But Sal’s been throwing off my traditional sense. Which I’m really happy with by the way.

Nanny’s daughter gives Sal a water gun. Kind of cool looking, but not that functional looking. But has two water storage containers and several colors. I don’t really care about him having it, but I know Catherine will. My grandfather used to give me and my brother water guns and slingshots and all sorts of stuff that my mother would quickly confiscate. And I saw a similar fate for Sal.

Talking with our nanny and Sal about it though highlighted something else.

Sandy: Sal, you have to ask your mommy and daddy to see if you can keep the gun, right?
Sal: Okay.
Sandy: And what will you do if your mother says no?
Sal: Ask daddy.
Sandy: And what will you do if your father says no?
Sal: Maybe cry. Sometimes that works.

What a little sneak. I love it. Sandy closes by telling Sal he needs to offer throwing the gun away if everyone says no and Sal agrees to it.

So moms comes home. Eventually the water gun comes up. She’s not happy with it. She doesn’t think Sal can have it. I toss out the suggestion of him waiting until he is 4 years old. Just random. Made it up. Was kind of figuring he’d forget, but also knowing he wouldn’t. But trying to delay the issue.

Sal: I am 2.
Me: Yes. So you’ll need to wait until you’re 4.
Sal: But there are 2s who play with guns too.

And I have to turn away, cause I’m laughing at his argument, which is valid, but no help for him in this case. I’m also impressed that he used “two” and “too” in the sentence. His mom continues to rally against the gun. He gets the message. And even offers to throw it away. Which we agree to, but he doesn’t move. Instead, he busted out the reasoning that I love so much I’m willing to let him have the gun. But his mother wasn’t so inclined. Still…

Sal: This is not a gun. I call it a gun. But it is not a gun. It is a water-plant-dooley. It is not a water gun. It is a water-plant-dooley. So I can have it.

pattern recognition.

Apr 152008
 

So we’re looking at another set of superhero figurines and I don’t know who all the Avengers are. And the Amazon page didn’t list them off by name. So we get the encyclopedia. Black Widow? Maybe. I goto the page. I ask Sal if they look alike.

They don’t really, but it’s close enough. Blond girl. Black outfit.

But Sal keeps disagreeing with me.

“Daddy, that’s not Black Widow. That’s Warbird!”

Warbird? Is there even a character named Warbird? We look up the encyclopedia, and wow – there is a character named Warbird. I wonder what she looks like…black outfit…with a gold lightening bolt/Z on it.

It was one thing when Sal learned how to say “encyclopedia” – but it’s another now that he knows all the characters that me, catherine and sandy know – combined.

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