Bag's Rants

Education begins at home.

As many of you know I have a granddaughter. Like all who spring from your loins, although in this case not directly, she is undoubtedly the smartest, most beautiful and lovable girl in the whole world. Unlike the others who say this, in our case it is true.

Anyway, so in an attempt to beat the odds in the UK we are all trying like mad to teach them as much as possible before they enter the system that we joking refer to as an educational system. To this end we sit down with then and try and teach them whatever we can.

Yesterday, it was my turn. After a few fruitless attempts at attempting to teach her about black holes and other astronomical phenomenon of which she clearly had no intention of listening we wandered off to some of the older toys thrown in a corner from where she was younger. Out was pulled a couple of toys put away over a year ago. I really should tidy up. What caught her eye was one of those little blocks that they could hammer plastic blocks through plus a little hammer. One of the thing that amazes me is how long a kid can do the same thing time after time without getting bored. She used to bash away at this thing for hours.

Anyway this block has eight hollow shapes with four colours and the items can be bashed through turned over and bashed again as many times as you want but I had of course to try and teach her something as well. So I'm pointing the the shapes and saying square, circle, which she knows and pyramid, hexagon which she doesn't while she is saying the colours, red and bashing the red one then blue and bashing the blue one ignoring me and deliberately obstructing my advanced education techniques. Now I know what modern teaching is like.

At one point there was a knock on the window and I looked up to see my son waving in. Sadly at that point blue coincided with hexagon and I received a hammer blow to my index finger from a rapidly moving yellow plastic hammer wielded by a sadist and I thought my finger was broken. It is unbelievable how a plastic hammer hitting a finger sitting on the edge of a hollow plastic block can hurt. While I was cursing and nursing my finger my son was in hysterics. It's so easy to please some people.

So yesterday she learnt some new words. Another failure turned to success at the last minute. Or maybe not.

posted by Bag @ 7:18 pm