Geeky Family Time

How did you spend your weekend? With the family? Chores? Shopping? Swimming? Going to the park? Not us, nope. Kids were worn out from a full week of summer (day) camp last week and my goal was to keep them in, quiet, and healing from sunburn (which they got despite being painted in sunscreen) so they’d be fully recharged for camp again this week. We logged on, and went on quests… wizardly, monster fighting, world saving quests! I’ve advocated for the online game “Wizard101” before, but thought I’d actually show you a bit of what I’m talking about.

It is a fun, family, MMORPG, and we have been playing and sharing this game for a long time, but usually, depending character level or place in game play, there’s only so much we could do as a group. When we first started playing, Honor (then 6yo) would get bored of the actual game quickly, but still had fun running around the virtual worlds, playing hide-and-seek with her brother, and shopping. However, as the kids have grown their skills in tactics and team play, we’ve been able to do more actual ‘team work’ in the quests, rather than just helping each other out here and there, and hanging out together in the game. Chess, it’s not, but the characters, their classes, and abilities can be complex, there are many variations, and players must pay attention to their partners, as well as the enemy, and their own stats, offensive and defensive, in order to play well. There are ways to aid or protect your teammates… if you are paying attention to their needs as well as your own. There are also plus and minus percentage spells to use, which require a bit of math to estimate what attack or defense you should play in order to win a battle.

Here’s Honor (right) and I having a little mommy-daughter time. My character is casting some sort of death spell.

Maybe this spell. He’s always good to have on your side.

My character can also manage some pretty tough fire spells, like a phoenix. Honor’s 'reaction(texted, as she was in another room, away from me) : “Cute!” … I guess, as long as he’s not aimed at you, he is cute.

  My little girl is quite the ice wizard. When she casts a spell, little snowflakes swirl around. She’s also, finally, learning to equip her character (clothes and tools) properly, to increase her strength and defense stats… it’s part of the game strategy, and not just about style and matching colors(!), but what can I say, she’s has her girly moments.

Here she is, fighting next to her dad, in process of sending an evil snowman after the polluted elementals we were battling.

Honor also enjoys decorating her house, and collecting pets. You can win or buy items in the game and each player’s home can be a very unique hang-out/trophy room to show off to your friends.

Here are Brian and Honor with a couple of their pets. The game has a new feature that allows you to train your pet so that it might actually assist you in battle with a spell here or there, or by providing a boost in your stats. I’m glad they don’t bring home these sorts of critters in real life.

The game allows you to make a number of separate characters. The game plot stays the same, but how you play with a wizard of one school (life, death, myth, ice, storm, and fire) will be different than your strategy in another school. There is a bit of story line, here and there, that differs as well.

Brad played one of his characters to the end, pretty much maxed out, and then started another to work with another of Brian’s new characters. Here he is with Honor, using his death mage. He’s got a pet ghost, how cool is that?

Casting one of our favorite spells, the skeletal pirate. The animation in this game is very well done, and as you can see from the screen shots, the details and backgrounds are very ornate and detailed too. The colors are bright and vibrant. When this spell is cast ,water covers the play area, an island rises from below, the pirate awakes, focuses his eye on you, and leaps up to attack with his sword. It’s humorous, but rather cool too. The game deals with fighting, and spells, and beating bad guys, but it’s not graphic or gory, and if you get killed, you might lose some progress and have to re-start an area, but you come back to life again, unlimited times.

Wait, where’s Brian? I wouldn’t forget my awesome son! Here’s his storm character starting to get all sparkley and cast a spell.

And when he gets all sparkle-y, I mean really sparkle-y…

Watch out! This might be coming your way.

or this…

or this…

or even this guy.

I don’t actually plan on turning my blog into a free-advertising site for this game, but we get so much enjoyment out of it, as a family, I do like to share. Having 4 computers functioning, and every one at a level/place that works well together, was a new experience. I couldn’t resist grabbing (and sharing) some screenshots. Just one more…

Family portrait…  everybody on the battlefield.. say cheese!

We’ve got Spores

We’ve got spores in our house, but not in a bad way. It’s the latest PC game we’ve been playing as a family. Spore, by EA games.

Basically, a player creates a race of creatures, and helps them survive and evolve.

Our youngest likes to use the creator in the game to invent new creatures, which is actually quite fun, but the rest of us have had fun playing the game too. You can start your game with a basic primitive critter, wiggling around in the goop of creation, and you do your best to help it survive. You earn points as it goes, feeding and fighting. What it eats and how you play, effects the genetic points and traits earned. The first guy I created was darn slow, and apparently, very tasty. I had to make him turn and fight to survive. Everything wanted to eat him. When he managed to crawl from the muck, he earned the genetic trait “carnivore”. Had he managed to stay sheltered more, he may have been an herbivore or omnivore. Isn’t he a cute little bug? I named his race “Crunchy”… it turned out to be appropriate, as he had to crunch or be crunched to survive.

             

Well, I thought he was cute… but I suppose other critters remembered him from the primeval kiddy pool, because no matter how hard he tried to ‘charm’ other creatures to be his friends, they were either terrified or hateful… so he had to eat them to live.

Finding more DNA points and accomplishing quests allowed my a creature to become a very successful predator as he evolved.

Brian and Brad had better luck with the whole social thing… nobody liked my race! Wait. I take that back. There were a couple of tiny little critters that were not afraid of him. They adored him so intensely that they followed him into battle and adored their little selves into extinction. Sigh… Eventually he evolved into a tribal state, with a whole new set of objectives to fulfill in order to survive, succeed and evolve.

By this time, I gave up on teaching this guy manners and let him embrace his vicious genetic tendencies. He tore through the tribal stage, learning to hunt as a group, fish, and domesticate animals so he could spend less time hunting, and more time eradicating the competition. Hey, it’s what worked for him. A tiger without stripes is still a tiger (and this guy has stripes).

Eventually my guy advanced enough to move into a civilization stage, and despite going in labeled as ‘aggressive’ military,  he finally managed to make a couple of allies… only a couple… but enough to eventually make it to the space age. The civilization and space age allow you to create buildings and vehicles, as well as customize your creature's accessories. It sounds simple, but the graphics and interface are really good and it’s fun to use your own creations in the game.

Brad managed to get a race to these later stages completely peacefully – earning the racial trait of religion. He’d convert others to his way of doing things. Brian played an economic game… which is somewhere in the middle.  I’m not done playing this particular race. Crunchy is now allied with a couple of other space age races, and is filling the role of galactic police. When his buds need help, they know who to call. 

The game is not just about eating things and fighting. Your character has to earn resources in order to advance, to equip his vehicles, protect his cities, etc. He must provide factories to increase production, but not too many factories, because without devoting some resources to entertainment, the people will be unhappy. You must colonize planets in order to gain more resources, but of course, this costs. Some planets are nothing but bare rock and the player will want to terraform the planet to increase production and therefore profits. It is a bit of a puzzle as you must adjust the atmosphere and temperature (with costly tools), then add plant and animal life in order to keep it stable. There are quests and errands you can take from other races in order to gain friends and allies. There is even a bit of business involved as you trade resources for cash. You need to be smart about how much you buy and sell items for so that you can turn a profit. Buy low, sell high, save up to buy what you need to run a good business, and allocate resources efficiently … getting a kid to think in math and economics is not bad game play! I also believe there are good, basic, lessons to be learned regarding ecological balance, evolution, cause and effect, and diplomacy.

It’s a versatile game that allows you to start play at whatever stage you feel. You can start as a cell, or create a tribal guy and go from there, etc. Spore allows multiple games to be stored, good for a family. Rather like the Sims games (Which is less of a kid game. It's good, but has adult situations/humor.). In Sims, each house/family is a separate game, and in Spore, each ‘planet/race’ is a separate game.

You can also upload or download creatures from the Spore homepage – there are some very creative folk out there – which makes the game even more interesting. You never know which of your, or someone else’s, creatures will show up in your game as a creature, or fellow intelligent race. One example, that had my husband and I giggling like kids (the real kids were in bed at the time), is when Crunchy was still in the tribal stage. He and his gang were running into a canyon chasing some ferocious food-animals, when they were attacked by a rare epic creature. An epic is a HUGE version of a creature. The ironic thing is that this epic was another of my creations (not grown from a cell, but something I’d made while experimenting with the creator). I have to say, it looked awesome in giant-sized action. I made one heck of a monster! But it ate my entire tribe. Yes, we were laughing, but only because it was so unexpected. There they were, running through the woods, professional hunters on the move.. and like an old fashioned monster movie… Godzilla suddenly appears atop a slope, poses and roars mightily, then rampages down and destroys everything! What the..?!? Fortunately, the game is very forgiving and lets you start again at your last save point, as many times as needed, which is especially good for when Honor plays. It is tough to play at times, and unlimited do-overs helps avoid frustration in younger (or older!) players.

We enjoy this game and recommend it for families, but remember…

…beware of epic crabdragons!

Not joking around

(a ramble from the geeky side… virtual parenting)

So, after getting Brad and Brian hooked on this MMORPG called Sect (you can click on the icon above to check it out, and yea… it’ll give me some credit if you play, but not enough for me to be pushing it – just being honest!), and as I’ve played my first character up to a fairly high level, I started a second character, which I meant as a joke!

Back up a bit… for the non-gamers: In this game you must fight with other players, hoping to kill them and offer sacrifices to your chosen deity in order to gain favors… it’s set in a destroyed sci-fi future scenario… visualize it… it makes sense (sort of)… Anyhow, it’s a text based game, nothing graphic or we wouldn’t let the 9yo play. When you get down to the bare bones of it, it’s just a numbers thing and I have no problem letting the kids play a game like this that makes them think in math. Honor doesn’t play this one, yet, the numbers and multiplication/estimating/predicting required to play well is a little bulky for a 1st grader. The most basic way to explain this game is you must gather resources by fighting or completing missions, buy items which boost your stats and improve your income, and hope for the best when you click to roll those virtual dice – the odds of course, being weighed by the choices you make with your stats. Turn length is limited by energy points, which are also part of your stats. Stat points, which must be earned, and are rare and precious things, you try to allocate in such a way as to promote your character’s strengths. All points are limited and refreshed only after (real) time has passed. You do NOT want to waste your energy, as you don’t get it back once it’s gone, and accomplishing tasks within set times will earn you bonuses.

As for the ‘joke’, often, when attacking other players, you’ll hit them to within a couple points of zero (dead), and that’s it. You’re not allowed to attack the wounded, put them out of their misery, and rack up another sacrifice point for your chosen god. Instead, you’ll get this annoying message that says “Your opponent is nearly dead already. Let's fight him later.” … very frustrating! I don’t want to “fight him later”… I want to finish him off now! There are perks to be gained. Now! Not later. I got tired of my “opponent” being “nearly dead” and untouchable. I figured that other players might feel the same way, so I decided to create a fighter to be an actual ‘touchable’ opponent.

Trouble is… my new fighter, Nearly Dead, has turned out to be a tough guy. Not to mention, lucky as all get out. This ‘whipping boy’ joke I started him with… he’s not into that. Not at all. He has proceeded to kick virtual behind from the moment I turned him loose. Winning fights, snagging loot in quantities beyond anything my other character could ever imagine, increasing stats and acquiring gear and real estate in ways that ought to be illegal. You do not have to “fight him later”, he’s real (virtually) and ready to fight right now… but doing so is probably a very bad idea… his reality, not the one I thought he’d have… and yes, I like his version better. Is it silly to be proud of a over-achieving collection of electronic data? Well, I am.

Oddly enough, this makes me think of my real, and not so blood-thirsty, offspring. As a mom, most things usually wrap back around to my real kids somehow. My Nearly Dead fighter guy has made me think back, way back, before the kids were born – I had these ideas of how our kids would act, what they would look like, how we’d teach them and how they’d learn, how they’d relate to us and each other, etc. Ha! How naive! Nope. Instead, each came into the world with their own agendas and plans for world domination… all I get to do is boost their stats, devote energy wisely, and provide them with what I think are the proper tools, using what little time I am given within this ‘turn’ as their mom, then my role is to merely stand aside as they play their own games… because, well, they will. No joke.

Happy Pumpkin Day

No, it’s not quite Halloween yet, but it is a pumpkin-y day. The school is having parties and a costume parade today and I am looking forward to going in to watch. Yesterday I went to Honor’s class and was able to help with their pumpkin party. It was a “fun day”, but it also included a bunch of learning activities. The kids each got a pumpkin and had to measure it, weigh it, guess whether it would float or not – and test it – then when we carved it. We had to measure how much goop and seeds we scooped out, and how thick the skin was. Honor got a pumpkin that didn’t like to stand up, but as we looked at it laying flat, she determined that the place we cut the stem off looked like a mouth saying “Woooo!”. She drew on the eyes, I cut it out, and we ended up with a screaming pumpkin (although perhaps we should have called it a biting pumpkin, because everyone wants to put their hands - and heads - in the mouth… nom nom nom!)

Hopefully the kittens will settle down before I have to leave the house. They are very clingy today, especially Ninja Cat. I have had a cat (or up to three cats at a time!) appear on my shoulder any time I sit down today (yes – even right now, although one is under the chair attacking my toes). Earlier, Ninja Cat climbed all the way up into my arms as I was standing at the counter trying to make coffee, and they were all over everybody as we were trying to get ready for school and breakfast. The cats have now moved, and are in a massive, three-kitten pile-up on another chair (for a change) having a wrestle-fest. This is usually what happens before they collapse in a fuzzy heap and sleep for hours. This is a good time for them to nap, because it means they will wake up right about the time the kids get home… time for more play and active kitty company!

And they love to distract… I mean ‘help’… with homework.

btw. I love having a table in the kitchen. I can help with homework as I clean up and as I prepare dinner. The kids also have plenty of room to work together, and they do enjoy helping each other. Brian gave Honor a practice spelling test yesterday, and they both read to each other for their reading time. Honor is also picking up some basic multiplication because Brian explained it to her, and she now she asks for problems when we quiz Brian on his math facts.

Kittens are big helpers when it comes to unpacking school backpacks!

Who needs TV?

Note on the on-going kitten name dilemma – we think the pale cat’s name will be Princess Pixie Allspice. Yes, a mouthful for a little cat, but this is a cat that requires a complex name, she’s not one for simple labels.

Oh no! They’ve gotten into the kleenex and are shredding a tissue all over the living room… and are growling over bits of their ‘prey’ too!… I don’t think this is a ‘toy’ I want to encourage. Guess I better go do the mom thing and redirect their energy in a positive way. More later…

Math games, times two

Brian had a dice game for math homework. I was cooking when he brought it out and he asked if I could play, so I suggested that, if he didn't want to wait for me to reach a stopping point, he could teach his sister to play - if it was a game that could be played with adding or subtracting, or even counting (rather than multiplication). I believe the game called for 5 or more rolls of the dice, so it had bigger numbers than Honor has been using in kindergarten, but she can count dots, even if she's not up to complex double-digit addition yet.

After playing Brian's homework game, Honor got out a worksheet that her class had done and she taught Brian how to play a number race game with dice.

Who says math isn't fun?

Solve for M

Solve for M when (X + A + B + Z + 10i)/P = 4M and X = ricotta that you do not own, A = A half bag of shredded mozarella, B = Beef, Z = zucchini, and i = various assorted other ingredients, approximately 10 in number, P is for pasta in the form of uncooked lasagna noodles, which divides up the layers, and M equals M! for the resultant lasagna, hopefully mulitplied by 4, the number of people in the house, which would equate to 4M, aka Mmmm.

Show your work.

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Add B (ground beef) and 3i (olive oil, chopped onions, and diced garlic clove) to a good sized pot. Brown B = (B+3i)

Add 3i (6 small diced tomatos x 1 cup white wine x various herbs, like oregano, parsley, thyme, basil, salt and pepper) and Z to (B+3i) in pot = Z+ 3i + (B+3i). Simmer for 10-15 minutes = (BZ +6i)

In medium bowl, add A (approx. 1.5 cups mozzarella) + 4i (2 eggs x 4 tbsp sour cream x .5 cup parmesan x .5 cup cheddar) = (A + 4i)

Take casserole dish or lasagna pan (at least 13"x9") and spread some of (BZ+6i) on the bottom, divide by P. Add more (BZ+6i) plus half of (A + 4i) ... or (A + 4i)/2.

Divide by P again, and then [ (BZ+6i) + (A + 4i)] .

Divide by P one more time, add the remaining (BZ+6i), and top with a handful of A and a sprinkle of i (when i = parmesan).

Cover with foil and bake for 40 minutes. btw. it might be good to have disposable aluminum cookie sheets lining your oven floor, with my math, there tend to be a lot of run-away remainders. A pair of these cookie sheets will last 6 months or so and it is easier/less toxic to use them than having to clean with oven cleaner - blech!

Remove foil and brown (A + i) for 5 minutes. Remove from oven, and allow to sit for 5-10 minutes.

While waiting, get eraser and remove X from the original formula.

Serve. Find M.

For those who have issues with the details in my math, let me explain my philosophy:



btw... does anyone else have a Firefox browser, or maybe it is a blogger thing, that has an identity crisis?? I stay logged in most of the time, I do not have this trouble with any other website or application, just my blog.. when I come to it using Firefox...even linking from my own, signed in dashboard page, it will insist that it is French. Not the blog itself, but the links at the top "Rechercher le blog", etc. I set the language options everywhere I find language options... google and my browser.... but it keeps switching back. Hard-headed, confounded, contrary, contraption!

Pros and cons and skulls

There are definitely pros and cons about getting sick. When you are very ill, you get lots of attention and sometimes even prezzies! The cons are pretty obvious. You're sick. You have to have surgery. You have to be stuck in a boring hospital for DAYS! The doctors don't let you eat when you are starving! You get banned from school for even MORE DAYS! And from PE and Taekwondo for the rest of the month! Arrgh!

But, Brian also had a lot of pros. He was loved on and spoiled by everyone. When we arrived home, not only did he have nice balloons and a sign on his door from his friend, there were banners on the wall in the entry from daddy and Honor.

As we drove in from the hospital, the bawwab (aka - the guy who does everything) for our building, Ahmad, hopped on his bike and rode off. We found out why a couple minutes later - he came to our door with a big bouquet of flowers for Brian :-) Brian also received an awesome set of Legos (one he'd been drooling over in the Lego catalog) from Brad's office mates. When we went to pick up Honor one afternoon, we stopped in Brian's class to get school work for him... yea.. I guess we have to put that in the cons pile. Responsibilities do not go away! But along with the big pile of homework, Brian got an armload of nice cards from his classmates.

Brian should go back to school tomorrow. He's had his bandage off since the day before Thanksgiving and the wound looks very good. He didn't have any stitches. He's been feeling good all this week and seems to be getting his energy back. The first week home, he was very tired in the evenings, much earlier than he usually was. He seems to be back to normal now.

He's been getting through all of his homework and doing a great job. He loved the math and science, and as typical, we have had to struggle to get through the writing. He is typing up his work now. His class is writing little books on subjects that they are 'experts' in. Brian chose playing the game 'Age of Mythology' as his subject. He wrote up an introduction, and three chapters full of information on the game. Pure torture for a kid who hates to write, but he's a done great job. It is odd that he can TELL in great detail, and lovely vocabulary, all about subjects he likes, like this game, but when it comes to writing it down... it's painful. He'll tell me that it is "An action game where you gather resources, and the favors of gods from legends, in order to build your towns up, advance through the civilization ages, and create strong armies to win campaigns". He'll write down, "It's a game with god powers." I have to remind him that "It's not a list, it's a story!" He tries to make it as short as possible to get through it, and just get it over with. He still needs to work on improving the speed and neatness of his handwriting (he hates it) but I think that as that skill improves, so will his desire to write down all this good stuff he thinks up. Thank goodness that we get to put the final version on computer - he likes typing better than writing.

At least he was able to have some fun with his science project. He had to demonstrate knowledge of the human skeleton, and could choose a way to do so on his own. He chose to do a comparison of the human skeleton with an animal's skeleton - the animal he chose was a dragon! First, he looked up with a bunch of facts about human skeletons. He also found a good, labeled, human skeleton on the internet. He also found a labeled dragon skeleton on the internet! Using the facts he found about humans, he was able to write up a bunch of 'facts' about the dragon skeleton too. He also wrote up a Venn Diagram to illustrate how some aspects of human and dragon skeletons overlap. When he laid things out, he found that even with pictures of skeletons, pictures of dragon and human (a knight, of course), and his diagram and fact sheets, he still had a bunch of space left on the poster. So, he went back on line and found a bunch of skull pictures - dragon and human - to fill in the spaces. I found a good femur bone picture and made lots of little bones for decoration.

Brian directed all the cutting and layout of the pictures, but Honor and I were recruited for physical labor.

His finished project turned out very nice. I was very proud of all the research and good internet skills he used, not to mention the creativity in coming up with dragon facts. I thought he showed good understanding of why dragons might have certain shaped bones, while humans do not - like simple hand bones with claws, vs complex hands with thumbs. Doesn't it look good?

We delivered his project to school yesterday when we went to get Honor, and he got to see his classmates. Everyone had to see his surgery incision and ask how he felt. It will be good to see him get back to his full routine tomorrow!

Gotta spread the word

A new blog friend.... "a babywearing mama of a super-cool son" ...who I wish I'd known while they were still in Cairo(!).. pointed me to a great homemaker helper website, the Fly Lady. I was surprised when I linked on it because I was already familiar with the website, even though I wasn't (yet) a member or subscriber. I've been googling crockpot hints and this site has popped up several times. I think I also hit on it for an albaster cleaning hint, but I may be mis-remembering that. I signed up for the emails and love it already. They are so positive and humorous! Not to mention.. useful.

One feature is a daily email directed at kids. Today's cleaning/organizing challenge for kids was to go through their socks and get rid of those that were no good or too small. What a simple, but great, idea for a kids' organization project. Not too big or overwhelming (unless you are a tired little girl named Honor, she opted out - and it gave us a good chance to talk about fairness - do the work, get paid; don't do the work, don't get paid - fair!), and it was actually a useful job. Not makework. I have had the kids doing work around the house - more so than the housekeeper did, that's for sure - but I am not making them slave. I am trying to keep jobs reasonable and fun for their ages. I feel they are quite capable of doing the work, they just need to get in the habit of doing so (they are), and of understanding that some work we do around the house because that's what families do - ie, work together - and some work will be bonus work. Extra work that will earn a bit of cash. So, where to come up with these 'special' jobs? I think I finally found a source of ideas.

If earning wasn't a big enough lesson, I am trying to find a good way to add in lessons of savings and bills. For one thing, we do not hand the kids cash. We do not usually have them do any shopping locally. Having cash is pretty much a waste for them here. They have no need for it. So, except for lectures(!), how to teach about money value? Well, working. Not allowances. No freebies. Work, for money.

We've started writing down what they earn. Might as well learn 'on-line' banking with virtual cash from the get-go! I am still thinking about the details, but I want to come up with a ledger or spreadsheet - that I maintain, but they can look at - that will show what they earn - a total 'in'. How? (1$ from laundry, 2$ from cleaning mirrors, etc.). What they spend (ie. money 'out'). "Mommy I reeeeallly want this webkinz thing"- so, maybe I order something on-line and give them the invoice when the item arrives in the mail. Brian is also reading well enough that we may explore a bit of comparison shopping. Then, they can subtract their costs from their 'free-to-spend' balance, which might also be a good lesson in taxes and S&H charges! I also want to show them how to set aside a certain percentage (or perhaps just a set amount) per month from their earnings, into a savings account (real ones, so they can see interest too), and know how to watch (be aware of, and not overspend) the balance of their 'free-to-spend' total. I'd like to maintain this on a single sheet - not as a competition really, but so they can see what happens, either way, if they make different choices.

I think I have the idea behind this big lesson down. I just need to find a way to package it for a 7yo and 5yo to see and understand. Preferably off of the computer, a print-out on the wall or something, and even better would be a format that both kids can understand... that's going to take a little more doing, although Honor is pretty handy with numbers, so maybe it won't be too hard to figure something out.

Logic?

We never quite know what to expect next with Honor. At dinner the other night, as we were all chit-chatting about regular things, Honor suddenly asks: "If I were cheese, but could not turn into a cup, would people who knew I was cheese, think I could not turn into salt and pepper too?". The table got quiet. Then Honor started giggling, and we all started giggling - but, where did that come from?! I guess the answer is, the same place she gets all these things she comes up with - and maybe we aren't meant to know what happens next. Life would be too boring.

Still, as goofy as it was, and as non-mathmatical as I am, she gave me algebra flashbacks. If cheese is A, and cup is B, and salt and pepper are C and D; then if A is not equal to B, and A is not equal to C or D, then B does not equal C or D. Both kids have a scary, natural, affinity for math and logic... definitely got that from Brad! However, Brian's tendency is more orderly and neat; Honor is the one who brings in the cheese.