BatBoy and Sum Dog

In general, I'm not a fan of video games for young kids.  It's not that I don't like games -- I do -- but when my husband and I were growing up in the 80's, the number and accessibility to games were far more limited compared to today.  Neither of us started playing until we were in our tweens.  Now, with my husband working at home as a video producer, in addition to being a game and gadget geek, we are simply surrounded by computers and other sources of electronic entertainment.


BatBoy, being very like his dad, loves games.  However, lately, I've realized that his love of video games partially stems from his love of games in general.  He loves board games, logic puzzles, Rubik's Cubes, jigsaw puzzles, sports games, pretend games -- all kinds of games.  In the virtual world, he doesn't have to worry about making a mess or encountering physical difficulties due to his age.  The rules are clear and there is always a virtual personage there to cheer him on.  He doesn't realize that the more time he spends on video games, the more he thinks about them.

Levels of Infinity

One of the things I like about Life of Fred is that the exercises leave a lot of room for control by the user.  Not only can we skip questions; we can take a question and travel down that line of thought as far as we would like to go.


In Butterflies, Dr. Schmidt tells us that the set of whole numbers is infinite.  That was easily reworded to ask (since we're in the "Your Turn to Play" section anyway), "How many whole numbers are there?"  SpiderGirl picked a big number.  Then I added 1.  BatBoy jumped up and responded with an even bigger number.  So I added 1.  BatBoy threw out a VERY big number.  Before I could respond (and I could see she had been thinking while BatBoy was jumping) SpiderGirl blurted out, "They go on forever!"  

Life of Fred

At the end of May, SpiderGirl had a little educational funding to be spent.  Since I was looking into them, I thought it would be worth it to pick up the elementary set of Life of Fred.  I figured she could quickly finish Butterflies and most of Cats, and then we would settle in to go through Dogs a little more slowly.  Apples wouldn't be a complete waste either -- BatBoy could start there.

Avocado's Numbers

The sample booklet of my workbook, Avocado's Numbers, arrived in the mail yesterday.  I was so excited, and I think my excitement must have rubbed off on SpiderGirl and BatBoy.  They spent an hour or so go through the first few pages.