Monopoly the game


Surely you know the board game Monopoly?  It was one of my favourite games to play as a child.  Games used to go on for hours or even days, with IOU notes being written to try and avoid bankruptcy, and extra rules added to prolong the game - like paying someone who was close to bankruptcy to move your piece around the board!

I even had a book on Monopoly tactics and strategies, which I was convinced helped me when I won (although my brother who I usually played against had also read the book!).

Monopoly the board game is over 75 years old.  According to the official website, the longest Monopoly game in history lasted for 70 straight days!  And there was a monopoly board once made worth $2 million dollars - with a 23 carat gold board and diamond studded dice!!

The original game had streets and locations in the UK - but now there are endless collectors editions like Star Wars and Cars versions and of course different versions depending on which country you are in - with streets from cities in your country to buy and develop!

Our girls are finally old enough to learn to play.  We don't have the Junior Monopoly, only the regular version. Both girls coped well with the game (at ages 6 and 8), although the younger one needed more help with all the maths involved!

For a start there's rolling two dice to move.  Simple addition and counting as you move your piece.  Then there's all the money - paying rents, giving change,  buying houses and so on.  There's multiplication when you land on a utility and the rent is 4 times what the dice roll was.   There is a lot of repetition and landing on the same places, so for example the rent of $18, becomes automatic to pay $20 and get $2 change without having to work it out!

As the game progresses, and houses and hotels are built - the monetary values increase too, so does the level of difficulty of the maths involved.  There is also the added difficulty of the 10% fee to un-mortgage a property!  

We played this morning for 3 hours straight!  Phew! Our elder daughter helped the younger one with some of the calculations, and there were several runs to the times tables poster in the hallway to work out rents payable! They LOVED it!  And I was amazed how fast the time flew - and that they never asked to stop!

I think Monopoly is a great game to introduce your kids to when they are old enough.  Our girls played again by themselves for the rest of the day!  Great practice for their number skills, but also skills of negotiation as they swap and buy properties from each other,  social skills as they work together and of course learning to cope with winning and losing  in an acceptable way!

Aside from the traditional board game - you can now play Monopoly online.
 There are even Monopoly World Championships for those of you who get really good!!


When was the last time you played Monopoly? What versions have you played?  Do your kids play it?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this wonderful game!


Monkey bars


Have you ever tried to swing across monkey bars as an adult?  I've tried a few times at local parks when our girls and I are the only ones there!  (I don't want an audience!).  I watch our girls swinging across them with ease - forwards, backwards, dangling by one arm and turning around; then when I get up to have a go - I can make it across, but only just and my arms feel like they're going to be pulled out of their sockets!

Is the problem that I have a heavier weight to support than them?  Or is it just not an exercise I'm used to doing?

The monkey bars are one of those things at the playground at school that every kid wants to be able to do.  In their prep year, they're mostly too short to reach them so can't even try. Then as they grow and move to grade 1,  they spend play times practising and showing off their blisters as badges of honour to each other and their parents, as they master this skill.

We do hear of many injuries as a result of kids falling off monkey bars - and there have been instances of the equipment being banned. For example, a school in the UK banned children from going on the monkey bars in their school playground unless supervised by an adult.   
Some of the problems with injuries are a result of children too small to reach the monkey bars themselves being lifted up - then the fall is too high for them if they subsequently slip.   More of the issue of the safety of play parks was covered in a post I wrote last week.

So far as me not being able to swing across the monkey bars as an adult (I had no problems as a kid I'm sure!) perhaps I just need to practise every day until I get blisters on my hands!  Then I can show them off proudly to my kids!  I'm sure they would be impressed!


Kids writing and illustrating books

Last year our younger daughter brought home her class pet hermit crabs for a weekend. It was an interesting experience - and we learned about taking care of them and enjoyed watching them scuttle around their glass tank.

When we had them at our house, our daughter asked if we could write a story about them.  Now I have written several stories for our girls - and do hope one day to have them published,  so that is perhaps where she got the inspiration from!  She was also starting to write more herself at that time, learning all her correct letter formation and so writing was becoming important for her too.

Over the weekend, I wrote a story about the two hermit crabs - with her help - and we then printed the story out, and she illustrated it!   She was very proud to take it to school with her and have the teacher read it out to the class.  It was also good to have a story about her, and something that was happening in her life.  Looking back at this book now - a year later, it's such a lovely keepsake to have!  A little snapshot of a point in time.

Both our girls have now written lots of their own little stories - with stapled together pages, and beautiful illustrations!  I sometimes wonder how much of that is influenced by the fact that I write stories for them - and so are they copying my example?  Or is it just that they have a love of stories and books and so want to create their own? I wonder if they will continue to write stories as they get older? I do hope so!

Do your kids write or draw their own stories? Have you encouraged this at all?


Fun with fractions and baking







At mum's group when our girls were younger, we all used to take treats to share. One time we took some cupcakes that I'd made with help from our girls. The kids all sat down to devour the tasty cakes.
When they'd finished, they all wanted another one.  We told them that unfortunately there were only two cupcakes left, but there were 4 children.  My five year old daughter then piped up with, "Well we could cut them both in half, then we could all have a piece!"  

I was impressed by this instant calculation.  Simple, yes, but a good example of mathematical problem solving, and of the importance of numbers in everyday life.  Half a cupcake is definitely better than none at all!



Baking

On another occasion, while baking cupcakes for a class party at our daughter's school, I realised what good practice baking in Australia is for kids to practice basic fractions!  I say 'in Australia' because here measurements are done largely in 'cups'.  (Growing up in England I learned to bake using pounds and ounces (lbs and oz)!)


So for example for these cupcakes the recipe asks for:

1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Since our daughter is just starting out with fractions - this was great for her to find the right cup to use, and to see the relative sizes of those cups too.

To slip in a bit of maths practice while doing something fun like this is great!  It also shows the kids how what they are learning at school - is relevant and useful in daily life!

When we'd made the cupcakes - our daughter then iced them with little Japanese flags ! Perfect for the party!

Do you bake with your kids?  What measurements do you use?


Kids playgrounds have become too safe


A few years ago (2011) in an interview on ABC radio, an early childhood expert - Prue Walsh, spoke out saying Public playgrounds have become too safe.  She believes that the influence of insurance costs and the fear of councils and schools being sued are part of the problem in making playgrounds unimaginative and too safe for our children.

I agree with her opinion completely.  I recently watched a TV programme called 'Lost Adventures of Childhood' which covered this very topic of discussion.

I certainly remember playgrounds being a lot different when I was a child.  My local park had a row of four swings, a roundabout and a large slide.  Todays playgrounds don't seem to have as many swings in a row, nor go as high as the ones I remember.  Nowadays, playgrounds are more brightly coloured, with a lot more rails and enclosed parts. They are more restrictive and allow less scope for imagination.  Playgrounds used to be very simple and encouraged children to be imaginative in their play and to take risks, with high swings and jumps.  

So are risks a good thing? Do more risks mean more injuries and more broken bones?  I think these would happen anyway.  Kids will always find places and ways to take risks, and if they don't find this in playgrounds when they are young, then where and when will they start to take those risks?

I think that generally today there is a tendency to over-protect our children.  Kids 'go out and play' far less than in previous generations, partly due to the advent of computer and video games, but also because parents are aware of the dangerous nature of the world we live in thanks to the ever present media.  But is the world really any more dangerours than in the past- or are we just more aware of those dangers?

By not letting our children take risks, how will they learn where the boundaries of common sense lie?  How will they learn to think for themselves and become adapatable and self-confident?

Making playgrounds safer and subject to more rules and regulations is also detremental to our kids physical development.  Play is nature's way of making sure we learn necessary skills.  A few years ago I remember a friend being told to take her child to a park and tell him to climb the wrong way up a slide in order to help him improve his underdeveloped motor skills.  Kids should not need to be 'told' to play and experiment, it should be a natural part of their lives.  I see skills being 'taught' in schools now - like balancing and climbing.  Surely kids should already have acquired these skills by the time they start school!

Are we stunting an aspect of the growth of our children in trying to protect them?  Injuries, scrapes, bruises and even broken bones are a part of a regular normal childhood.  Patterns of behaviour are leant from risk taking and from making mistakes.

At the end of the TV programme I mentioned earlier (Lost adventures of Childhood)  mention was made of special adventure playgrounds that have been built in the UK, which provide a structured and supervised place for children to take risks.  Basically it's like taking them back to what playgrounds used to be like! 

It seems  that we are now coming full circle and realising we have taken the real 'play' out of playgrounds.  Hopefully playgrounds will start to return to the real adventure playgrounds I remember from my childhood, and our children can be allowed to play as nature intended again!

Do you agree?  Or are you happy that playgrounds have become so 'safe' now, and children are less likely to hurt themselves there?



E-readers for kids


I love books, our kids love books, and we have a house full of books.
The girls have bookcases full, specially made bed pockets full, and still more books are overflowing into bags!
The books they have are read, re-read, sorted, and very well loved.
I remember when I was a kid, my brother and I would, every now and again, pile all our books up in a big heap on the floor and take turns picking books - so that we had a different selection of books to read in our room.

Some of my favourite books were kept for years by my parents in their loft in England and then brought out in their suitcases to Australia where we now live - for our kids - their grandchildren.

Seeing and reading these books from my childhood again (some of which have come from Scotland from Euan's childhood too) has been a wonderful trip down memory lane for both of us.  It's quite sad for us in way that our girls are now reading some of these books on their own - so we're missing out on the stories again!  - Although we still continue to read books to them at night before bed, and I'm sure we will for some time!

I have recently been thinking about e-books and e-book readers, and how this will change (if at all) reading for children.

We do not have an e-reader ourselves.  I was brought up with the philosophy and the attitude that you don't generally buy things you don't need. (Of course I do buy non-necessities but always find myself considering them lots before purchasing).
  Since we have so many books, are always getting more from various book sales, school fetes and of course the library; what need would we have for an e-reader?

What first made me think of it, was seeing how daunting it is for a new reader to see a big thick book that they would like to read, but the sheer size of the book puts them off.  If they were reading books on an e-reader, then would they be aware of the size of the book when they started to read it?  Would it make kids have more confidence in reading bigger and bigger books because they would all look physically the same size? - the size of the e-reader!

Our eldest daughter is currently reading one of the Harry Potter books, and each night she comes out to tell us in amazement how many pages she's read.  I guess this would be the same on an e-reader, which I presume still has page numbers showing.

Is there some way you can tell on an e-reader how far you are through a book?  It is satisfying to see where your bookmark is in a large book as you read - you can watch your progress through the story, and know when you're nearing the end.  Do you get this same sense of achievement, anticipation and excitement- of your progress through the book- when reading an e-reader?

Not having an e-reader myself, I had a look to see what you can get.  I was amazed to see how you can get books for young kids on e-readers.  Full pictures books - with interactive activities, and pictures that move - and the e-readers can even read the story out loud for the kid. 

The idea of reducing the need for all that storage space needed for books in a small house is appealing.  As is the argument for travelling abroad and being able to take endless books for the kids with you.

So, am I old-fashioned in liking actual books made of paper?  I like seeing shelves full of books - and as I mentioned earlier, ones that have been passed down through families - still with inscriptions on some of them of who gifted that particular book - or simply who that book belonged to. You wouldn't have this on an e-reader.  But then neither would they then deteriorate over time, and the pages start to loosen or fall out.

On the other hand, nothing seems to be made to last these days.  Most electronic equipment needs to be replaced every few years, and becomes outdated too.  I assume any books you have on your e-book can be saved and transferred to a new e-reader if necessary.

Then there is the environmental issue - of printing fewer books on paper - saving our dwindling rainforests.

My father loves reading too, and had not considered an e-reader at all until he won one.  He has now tested it out and can see the benefits in it;  from being able to download countless classic books for free, to being able to bring several books out to read when he comes to visit us from England (our choice of books doesn't always appeal to him!).

Do you have an e-reader?  If you do, do you use it a lot?  Do your kids use it? 
I would love you hear from those who use them as to what they are really like, but also everyone's opinion on e-readers vs books.


Whale adventure


Well, everything is all about whales here at the moment, from the great white Moby Dick to Whale Adventure by Willard Price.

Willard Price wasa childhood favourite of mine and I wondered whether the girls would like a 'boy's book'.  No need to worry, they love them. The books are a little dated but time never stands in the way of a great adventure.  Especially one that has strong characters, animals and baddies too!

Willard Price (28 July 1887 – 14 October 1983) almost made it to 100.  Unreal!!  What a life of natural history, travel and exposure to animals as well as literary genius.  I remember spending so many hours as a kid lost in a faraway place reading about Hal and Roger and their many adventures around the world in search of animals for their father's zoo.  It was really the take em back alive spirit that shone through, I wonder if Steve Irwin ever read them?

The one we have just read and inspired us to watch Moby Dick too was whale adventure.  It is quite different from the others as it misses the bring them back alive element and mixes old school whaling, Moby Dick and modern whaling ships. It is almost a history lesson as much as an adventure. In the same way Moby Dick takes you back to the days where men scoured the seas in search of whales and their oil for so many purposes, the vocabulary of whale adventure and it's nautical terms was at first tricky.  Once we got beyond this the girls loved it.

Contrasting it with Moby Dick is also interesting- there are a lot of parallels!
The crazy old captain, the feisty whales and edge of seat story lines. The biggest lesson learned by our girls are that whales are beautiful but powerful creatures.  As per Moby Dick- he was only protecting his girls and only when they hurt him did he take revenge with serious consequences.

It also seems a great way to have introduced the girls to a literary heavyweight such as Moby Dick- there is no way they would have read it themselves at the ages of 6 and 8.  They really enjoyed both the book and movie.

I even found a link to a schooltype lesson on Whale Adventure.


In the end though,I think what really touched us was that whales are amazing animals and the girls are also into the save the whale idea.  The power of them as they breach is also amazing to see.  We are also excited as we often go out to the Great Barrier Reef and the whales are just starting to arrive.  I'll see if I can post a photo or video when we actually see one in real life.


Long live the whale.



As an aside- and thanks to Wikipedia, these are all the books of Willard Price:

When do children understand time?


Have you ever told your young child, "It'll just be a few minutes!"  when actually it will be a lot longer ?

Very young children do not have a good concept ot time, and how long things take.  Waiting for them always seems to take forever - regardless of whether it's for 2 minutes or 20 minutes. So when do they get this concept and how can we help them?

From my experiences with our girls, and backed up with what I've read, children don't get a good grasp on time until they're around  6 or 7 years old.  Before that they are learning about routines, basic o'clock times,  sequencing - what you do 'before' and 'after', and past, present and future with talk of what we did today, yesterday and what we're going to do tomorrow.

I found that a timer was a great tool for our girls to use to get an understanding of how long things take.  By showing them how to set the timer themselves,they could then watch the time ticking by, and see how long they'd already been waiting for something, and how much longer they still had to go!

They use their timer when playing on the computer for their 'set allowed time',  when taking turns playing with something they share, when helping with cooking and baking and even for doing their winter job of moving the sprinklers around the garden to water all our plants!

Then there is of course, learning to tell the time - both digital and analogue.  There is nothing better than giving your kids their own watch - they delight in being able to tell the time at any given moment! (and they do this LOTS initially when it's still a novelty!)

I also recently played some games with them of guessing how many certain things we could do in a minute!  This was lots of fun,and again gives them an understanding of how long a minute is!

But as with everything, there are some great websites with games to help kids learn:

Once they have got the basics, this site has a great game with 3 different levels:
It's another BBC website (the BBC produces some wonderful educational material) - which also has plenty of other literacy and numeracy games which are worth a look:






What things have you done to help your kids understand the concept of time?  Do you have any ideas you can share with everyone? We'd love to hear from you!





Child beauty pageants - why not?





A while ago, across Australia, people rallied against child beauty pageants. A group called "Pull The Pin on Pageants" organized these rallies in every capital city across the country, concerned about the way these beauty pageants portray women and young girls. This came in response to news that an American company had decided to bring its pageant to Australia for the first time.

We've all heard about the extreme cases of parents taking their children to have their eyebrows waxed, fake tans applied and pushing their children to strut about on stage to fulfil their parents ambitions, and financial desires. But is it really the pageants themselves that we should blame and try to ban?

There are countless beautiful baby contents in shopping centres and promotions for photographers and baby products. Why are these not considered so controversial? Is it because they are non gender specific? It is still a case of the parents dressing up their child for a competition - the baby or child has no say in whether or not they want to participate or not, or have their photos published in a national magazine.

But this is the role of a parent. To bring their child up the way they seem fit. To choose which clothes their child wears when they are very young. To decide which school to send them. To choose what food they will eat and which friends they will play with. A parent is meant to have control over their child when they are young, and this control lessens as the child ages and takes more responsibility for themselves - responsibility and choices made from morals and values instilled in them by their parents. To impose an age restriction on beauty pageants, as many people would like to see happen, is like saying no parent is fit to make decisions for their own child.

Of course there are both good and bad parents, and everyone's opinion on what makes a good or bad parent varies.

I think we underestimate the influence a parent has on a child, and nowadays, external influences are blamed far too much for problems. Girls who develop eating disorders, may blame the trigger as being a comment from their dancing teacher at a young age, telling them they should eat less to stay slim. I myself did gymnastics for years as a young girl, and remember a coach telling me to watch what I ate - but I have never had any eating disorder problems. I believe my parents brought me up with a healthy respect for by body, my diet and my appearance.

There is also the argument that a child who does not win a beauty pageant is being told they are not pretty enough. Any competition has winners and losers. Is beauty not in the eye of the beholder? One work of art may win awards and accolades from some critics, but be torn down by others. Some children may cry when they do not win a simple colouring competition but does that mean the competition itself is to blame for that child feeling upset? Competition is healthy, and a natural part of life.

Yes, child beauty pageants I'm sure, will inevitably have entrants who are pushed, primped and preened by ambitious and overbearing parents, who have little regard for their own child's feelings. Some young girls will dress up like adults in high heels and short skirts with make-up on. (If you're female - tell me you never did this with your mum's heels and make-up!) But does this pushing from parents not happen in every area- from sports to academia? We can't ban everything, to try to stop pushy parents!

I say let the kids dress up and have fun doing it.



Article first published as Child Beauty Pageants Coming to Australia on Technorati.

Swingball


Now that the weather is cooler here in tropical north Queensland, our girls are getting to play outside more and more - and not just in the pool!  For the summer months, the humidity is so high that outdoor play is really only the pool.  Now however, it's cool enough to play all sorts of games outside in the yard- a wonderful time of year.

One thing our girls have taken too this year is Swingball.  In case you've never seen this before, it's a game played using a pole in the ground with a string attached to the top, and a tennis ball on the end of the string. The string is attached so that the ball can swing around freely.  It can also be attached so that it winds itself up and down a spiral and reaches and 'end' after going one way for several rotations. In this way it can be used to play with two people, the winner being whoever gets the ball to their 'end' first.

It's a great way for kids to practice their bat-and-ball skills, and hand-eye co-ordination.  They can play alone, or with someone else.  We still enjoy playing as adults, and it's great to have something like this we can leave set up in the garden for the girls to go and play anytime they like.  Tennis in a limited space!

Similar to swingball in America is Tetherball.  I'd never heard of this until I found the description online when looking up Swingball.  It seems to be basically the same game,but using a kind of volleyball sized ball instead of tennis ball, and hitting it with your hands, instead of a bat!

Have you played Swingball or Tetherball?  Is tetherball something that people have set up in their backyards in the US? or is it played in schools?  I'd love to hear from someone who plays it or has played it - since this is the first I've ever heard of it!