you, just, ah,
Im done in this thread and I really hope you stop posting here for the sake of peoples right mind
Cultivating a protonerd?
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Don't let the door hit you on the way out of the topic. 
Now that I've explained in painstaking detail why I'm bothered by the transition from "What nerdy gifts can I give my niece?" to "How can I make her appealing to all the boys when she gets older?", and woefully given you all my woeful tale of past woeful woe,* let me reset the topic and pray that it stays reset.
Does anyone know of a (portable) radio designed for young children? This strikes me as something she'd really enjoy, but I don't know of anything durable enough to survive her dragging it everywhere off the top of my head.
I'll be really impressed if anyone gets that reference.
Now that I've explained in painstaking detail why I'm bothered by the transition from "What nerdy gifts can I give my niece?" to "How can I make her appealing to all the boys when she gets older?", and woefully given you all my woeful tale of past woeful woe,* let me reset the topic and pray that it stays reset.
Does anyone know of a (portable) radio designed for young children? This strikes me as something she'd really enjoy, but I don't know of anything durable enough to survive her dragging it everywhere off the top of my head.
I'll be really impressed if anyone gets that reference.
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hascoolnickname
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I could write a ton about the side topic here (having been a nerd my whole life and having exclusively nerdy friends), but I'll stick to your main topic for now. I have 2 kids of my own, and I do my best to cultivate their nerdiness.
For very, very young kids, Donkey Konga is probably the easiest music-based game. It's probably a bit too much for her right now, but definitely within a few years. My son Ian learned the basics of it when he was uhhh either 3 or 4.
I joke with people that my daughter learned to read before she learned to talk, and in fact that's nearly true. It's because she learned to use a computer very early on, and she had a great interest in the 'Living Books' type of games where you can have a book read to you and see the words highlighted as they are read. She would spend hours on the computer using those programs. The hardest thing for a very young child to grasp is how to use the mouse, but once they understand that, they're set. In fact, some computer games targeted for very young children skip the mouse entirely and just have a 'hit the keyboard and something will happen' kind of setup.
I guess my overall advice would be to help foster WHATEVER strengths she ends up having. It's cheesy, but I like the 'garden' analogy: all children are 'seeds' and the seeds need to have lots of care and attention to help them grow. But in the end, you can't change the kind of plant they'll grow into. I grew up as a kid who HATED Phys Ed, and was absolutely horrible at all kinds of sports. So eventually I began to have a sort of disdain for 'jocks'. And now in an ironic twist of fate, my son is a very athletic, physical boy with a great throwing arm
Fortunately, he also loves video games and is great at math. But, I gotta accept the fact that he might be a future jock and run with it......
For very, very young kids, Donkey Konga is probably the easiest music-based game. It's probably a bit too much for her right now, but definitely within a few years. My son Ian learned the basics of it when he was uhhh either 3 or 4.
I joke with people that my daughter learned to read before she learned to talk, and in fact that's nearly true. It's because she learned to use a computer very early on, and she had a great interest in the 'Living Books' type of games where you can have a book read to you and see the words highlighted as they are read. She would spend hours on the computer using those programs. The hardest thing for a very young child to grasp is how to use the mouse, but once they understand that, they're set. In fact, some computer games targeted for very young children skip the mouse entirely and just have a 'hit the keyboard and something will happen' kind of setup.
I guess my overall advice would be to help foster WHATEVER strengths she ends up having. It's cheesy, but I like the 'garden' analogy: all children are 'seeds' and the seeds need to have lots of care and attention to help them grow. But in the end, you can't change the kind of plant they'll grow into. I grew up as a kid who HATED Phys Ed, and was absolutely horrible at all kinds of sports. So eventually I began to have a sort of disdain for 'jocks'. And now in an ironic twist of fate, my son is a very athletic, physical boy with a great throwing arm
Fortunately, he also loves video games and is great at math. But, I gotta accept the fact that he might be a future jock and run with it......Excellent - I was sort of hoping that you'd reply, actually, since you have more experience with what children enjoy and what helps them develop than most of the other board regulars (myself included, obviously).
I was also a computer lover. Obviously, the Living Books series wasn't around when I was an epsilon, but one of my favorite activities was playing computer games with my father, and we did have a few programs (probably the first computer games aimed at kids, looking back at it) which I enjoyed playing on my own. I was incredibly lucky to have a father who was a computer programmer (back in the days when most people had no idea what that meant), and who had home computers some fifteen years before that was mainstream.
I remember the "hit the keyboard" programs. I remember one which you could type at and it would just echo what you typed back to the screen. When you filled up your page, it would clear it and start over again. I was crushed when I carefully typed out the first page of the story and then realized that it wasn't possible to save. That was the beginning of my long history with trying to get computer programs to do things they just weren't meant to accomplish. I've never looked back since.
Anyway, now that I've babbled about my *happy* childhood memories, too, thanks for the suggestion - Donkey Konga honestly hadn't occurred to me, and it sounds like a good thing to look into. And you have a good point about fostering all her strengths, not just the ones that I happen to identify with or like. But I figure her parents can do all the hard work, I'll just spoil her with educational toys.
(not entirely serious)
<grins> This description is interesting to me because I was very nearly the same way. I was a late speaker and an early reader - I didn't start speaking until I was about two, the same age at which I learned to read. Of course, when I finally did talk I spoke in complete sentences, undeterred by others' efforts to use baby talk with me. My parents were amused by this to no end.malictus wrote:I joke with people that my daughter learned to read before she learned to talk, and in fact that's nearly true. It's because she learned to use a computer very early on, and she had a great interest in the 'Living Books' type of games where you can have a book read to you and see the words highlighted as they are read. She would spend hours on the computer using those programs. The hardest thing for a very young child to grasp is how to use the mouse, but once they understand that, they're set. In fact, some computer games targeted for very young children skip the mouse entirely and just have a 'hit the keyboard and something will happen' kind of setup.
I was also a computer lover. Obviously, the Living Books series wasn't around when I was an epsilon, but one of my favorite activities was playing computer games with my father, and we did have a few programs (probably the first computer games aimed at kids, looking back at it) which I enjoyed playing on my own. I was incredibly lucky to have a father who was a computer programmer (back in the days when most people had no idea what that meant), and who had home computers some fifteen years before that was mainstream.
I remember the "hit the keyboard" programs. I remember one which you could type at and it would just echo what you typed back to the screen. When you filled up your page, it would clear it and start over again. I was crushed when I carefully typed out the first page of the story and then realized that it wasn't possible to save. That was the beginning of my long history with trying to get computer programs to do things they just weren't meant to accomplish. I've never looked back since.
Anyway, now that I've babbled about my *happy* childhood memories, too, thanks for the suggestion - Donkey Konga honestly hadn't occurred to me, and it sounds like a good thing to look into. And you have a good point about fostering all her strengths, not just the ones that I happen to identify with or like. But I figure her parents can do all the hard work, I'll just spoil her with educational toys.
(not entirely serious)
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Fluffyumpkins
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hascoolnickname
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Fluffyumpkins wrote:Neat avatar.
Potter wrote:im pretty sure its a sheet of acid stamps.
sam? LOL
Sorry to thread hijack, but it's a painting by Alex Grey, the guy who does all the artwork for Tool. And for the record, despite my interest in all things psychedelic and altered states, I've never done any psychedelic drugs, nor do I have a desire to. I barely even know what you're talking about.hascoolnickname wrote:lol, doubt thats a blotter
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hascoolnickname
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