Look at the innocence of these two, butter wouldn’t melt.
Little did we know that a plan was being hatched.
A plan to capture,
and tickle
everyone.
Till every last one gave up, or was too exhausted to run away.
We left the park, and the boys were spent. All five of them.
We know not to trust these two next time.
I got each of the boys a ball a few weeks back, with the aim of learning how to juggle. Myself and Irishwrath are doing okay at it, but it’s really hard!!
We woke up one morning, and this sign was blue-tacked on a door.
It reads: Missing Ball Call: Me
I found the ball, but unfortunately I can’t return it to its owner, as I don’t know who Me is 
Some days I look at my boys, watch them play, listen to them roar, hear my words coming out of their mouths, and I think they are mini-mes. Other days, like today, I think where did I get them?
A day in the botanical gardens in Geelong. I love botanical gardens. I never tire of majestic trees, beautiful flowers, and grass.
I love grass. It’s just perfect.
Boys are you checking out that statue’s butt??
Phew, she was just hiding something behind her back.
Come here boys and look at the beautiful flowers.
“We haven’t got time for that, we need to run!!”
Oh look at the bee busy collecting pollen. Isn’t nature wonderful?
“We are too busy for looking at the wonders of nature, we are playing hide and seek!!”
Have you see this? Look at the moss.
“That would make a good troll hole. At last you’ve shown us something interesting!”
Look closer boys, see the detail on the mushroom?
“Cool, troll food!”
“Mum come see. Free WiFi. Hehehe!”
I managed to persuade IrishWrath to admire a tree. Maybe he’s mine?
On our way out, I stopped to look at a tree.
IrishDoom said, “Some one must have told that tree a good joke”.
”It’s cracking up!!”.
Do your kids take time to smell the roses, or are they, like mine, too busy having fun?
I was working with a csv file last week where there were multiple empty fields on each row, not all of which were aligned. I considered the problem briefly then fired up a powershell console with the intent of doing some import-csv for each loop to parse out the data. The [string]::replace() method would work fine for the first instance of two consecutive commas but I wanted to replace all instances of repeating commas.
I stopped to think about the best way to do this when I thought perhaps a little recursion would do the trick! I came up with this function:
function spit ($line){if ($line -match “,,”){spit $line.replace(“,,”,”,”)}else $line}
If the argument matches the pattern i.e. two consecutive commas I pass the argument with one comma removed back into the function, and keep doing this till the argument doesn’t match the pattern. The function name was the first name that came into my mind because I wanted to spit out the results, which I was able to do nicely with
get-content filename.csv | % {spit $_}
As the joke goes…before you understand recursion you must first understand recursion.
If you’d like to learn recursion for yourself I found the following learning plan quite good
When I came downstairs the other morning, this is what awaited me.
Three hobbits going on An Unexpected Journey. After first breakfast, they set up camp under the school table.
They were attacked by a Warg.
But they chased him off.
Nasty hobbitses!
Four years ago my three older children were in a small private school. It was a nice school with good family values, but lacked the academics that I yearned for. I started thinking about homeschool, and looked at supplementary material for after school to ‘try’ homeschool, as it were. I stumbled upon Math Mammoth. Math Mammoth is a complete math curriculum for grade 1 to 6. Written by a homeschooling math teacher, Maria Miller, who, dismayed at the lack of quality math curriculum for homeschool families decided to write her own.
I began with IrishWrath, 4th grade at the time. We first did a few weekends, then I began keeping him home from school on Fridays. (I know truancy!! But I wanted a trial run.) Math Mammoth is written directly to the student, so I didn’t have to get involved much. That suits my homeschool style to a T. I don’t really teach, I facilitate. Over a few months I saw how much math he was learning in a few hours a week at home. It helped affirm my belief that he didn’t need to ‘go to school’, and sit for hours listening to the teacher repeating the same things over an over. So half way through 4th grade we took him , and a couple of months later his brothers, home. We have never looked back! I love ‘teaching’ them, they love learning and the bonus is more time together!
Math Mammoth gave me the courage to begin this wonderful homeschool journey with my children. It is easy to follow, yet rigorous. I realised I don’t need a teaching qualification to ‘teach’ math. Fast forward 4 years, IrishWrath has completed MM(3-6) and is now using AOPS. IrishCyborg finished MM(2-5) and went to Life of Fred Pre-algebra.
IrishDoom(1o) and IrishKing(8) are still using Math Mammoth. They are not as math strong as the older two, but are learning well with Math Mammoth. I have yet to get involved, bar explaining a word or question, but never the math concept.
Math Mammoth was never our only math curriculum. We use it as our spine, but like to add other things for variety, fun, and I’m a curricula junkie! It’s rigorous, very affordable, and would be the perfect program for many, many people. If I could only pick one curriculum for elementary school math, I would pick Math Mammoth without hesitation.
If you are interested in Math Mammoth, Maria has some free worksheets for to try.
We have been using Scratch here for about four months. It has turned out to be a firm favourite with my three younger boys, thanks in part to the great book Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games, and thanks to the wonderful programmers over at MIT Media Lab.
As you know, if you read my review of Super Scratch Programming Adventure, the binding of my copy fell apart. It didn’t stop us loving the book, but being slightly anal, I had to tell you about it. I didn’t contact the published to complain, instead I did it the lazy way, on my blog. The publishing company, No Starch Press, got wind of my ‘complaint’, and offered me a replacement copy. I was total gobsmacked. Are these guys for real? Do they really care what us little guys think? Turns out they do, and I love it.
Since I already have a perfectly usable copy of Super Scratch Programming Adventure, getting used by the fourth child now, I didn’t feel I need a replacement. I asked No Starch Press if they would let me give it away here, and they agreed. So all you have to do to enter, and be in with a chance to win this great book and start your kids programming, is leave a comment. Say hi, bye, or anything in-between.
Open to USA residents only. Terms and Conditions.
Good luck!
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| IrishWrath - Grade 8 | |
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| IrishCyborg - Grade 6 | |
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| IrishDoom - Grade 4 | |
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| IrishKing - Grade 2 | |
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