Friday-wear

1) This is what I have to look forward to in a girl… (Said in positive light, please)

4 year old recreates red carpet looks using her craft box.

The Miss appears to be a bit more crafts-y than Original Rockstar, she’s scrawling with chalks, crayons or markers every day even though I don’t think she’s actually drawing anything in particular (not planning on really “teaching” her anything specific yet, just letting her go free and wild mainly because of the early uncharted-neuron-path thing)… The biggest irony is “Co-luh!” (color) is her new favorite word, she’ll make an about turn if you offer her coloring pencils or crayons and…… it appears she doesn’t know any of them.  No colors. Seriously, I kind of tried (ok, not very hard – you can see how I’m taking the whole random-scrawling-but-not-enforcing-any-learning to new heights) but she never responds to any actual color words (“red”, “blue” etc), though she can name all the items on say, the red page (“socks”, even “butterfly” etc). Go figure. Then again, we almost thought Rockstar was colorblind, at that age.

Anyway I looked at these dress-up pictures and thought there’s an interesting way to build concentration or motor skills (plus, tearing paper into strips can be so therapeutic):

Mayhem (yes that’s her name, how cool is that) is 4, and one of the interviewers’ burning questions to her mother, was:

How much is done by you and how much is done by your daughter?

“The ideas are pretty much a 50/50 split, but Mayhem constructs a lot more than most people would probably believe. That’s one of the best things about this project, I see her learning new skills every single day. At this point, she knows exactly how many sheets of construction paper she needs to make herself a top and a bottom. She can lay the entire thing out and tape it together all by herself. Definitely, the more complex designs have more of my time invested, but she’s literally always beside me learning something new if she’s not tearing or taping or gluing while I am.”

“She knows exactly how many sheets of construction paper she needs to make herself a top and a bottom” sounds like a math problem Rockstar might have on IXL or at school – it would cover measurement, plus some addition/subtraction/multiplication…. I’m just saying, because I have friends whose daughters loathe Kumon and (unfortunately) subsequently math…

(Rockstar had a fun one in school recently too – how many jumps/ hops/ beads scooped with a teaspoon/ cubes stacked in a tower etc can you do in a minute? I can’t think of a better way for them to get a sense of how long 60 seconds is. As the kids hopped and counted their hops in that period, they soon realized that 80 hops was…. about right. 120, tops. And anyone who claimed to be hopping 300 times in a minute was possibly not telling the truth unless you could hop 5 times in a second and not get tired. Another interesting one was how many times they could write their name – because kids with 3- letter names would naturally appear to write their names many more times in 60 seconds than kids with 9 letters in their names. I love how they teach the math in his school…)

AND there’s lots more paper dress-up looks in this link, plus if you scroll down in there you get babies dressed up “with grownup careers”.

(Hee hee hee. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

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2) Time for warning labels on Miley? I didn’t even check her out on Youtube, first round of outrage. This time I finally went to see. What can I say, she’s doing us a favor. Look at where we were Before and After Miley’s Ridiculous Twerk-implosion. The moves just had to get so over-the-top people finally said Should We Actually Slap A PG-17 Or Whatever Rating On It?

I’m not going to put a pic of Miley’s racy VMA performance, so instead, here’s Will Smith’s family’s reactions to her performance:

I especially like the Smith Kids’ faces. Do you think they think the twerking and tongue are cool? (pic from trendgorilla.com)

See, before and after Miley did that, I don’t think bump-n-grind moves got tha-at much worse. I mean, they were already pretty bad Before Miley. So I’d rather have After Miley – probably more effectively restrictive than Before. (And honestly, WHO thinks sticking your tongue a mile out all the time is a good look anyway, I think the more parents freak out, the more attractive it’s going to be to tweens because of Forbidden Fruit Factor. It’s just not a good look. Why even bother trying to emulate it? No one tries to look like Chucky or Person In Mask In Scream except at Halloween right?)

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A-nyway 4-year old Project Runway in (see 1) so much better. Better than baking cupcakes on Junior Masterchef even (except the healthy stuff, of course). Idea for reality show, anyone? 

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3) Beauty Queens Who Marry Drug Lords. Just one of those things that erm, stretches your thinking a bit. Ever thought what happens to Mexican Beauty Queens who marry drug lords in an apparent drug lord tradition whereby they must marry beauty queens? Just so…

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4) Reddit’s Crazy Things Kids Have Brought For Show And Tell.

Like so…

And so. (Can’t imagine it’s easy being a teacher).

And exactly WHERE is this school where kids appear to have regular access to headless snakes, tarantulas and sharks?

See now, Rockstar’s school is in H-O-N-G K-O-N-G. I spell that out for the folks who don’t live here because for e.g. Rockstar’s current learning unit is about Time and Then and Now and the things kids keep bringing in for display……. There was “the first camera ever invented,” according to Rockstar. There was a vinyl of the Village People. (There are little kids who know the YMCA!) AND – note this – that antique black Village People LP had what looked like a HK price label in chinese. Did you get that? As in people possibly went out and bought vintage stuff here in Hong Kong for their kids to bring in for the learning unit. (Which of course is really great for all the kids to get to share in the learning and discovery process. I didn’t even think of buying stuff specifically, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen “the first camera” myself, and I’m how old… It never ceases to amaze me how much faster kids are learning stuff today – I initially remarked it was the internet but it’s not just that, it’s schools and parental involvement and how the way in which children are educated today is very, very different because of all the hands-on discovery, the amount of material to cover, the resources available………)

Also, if you saw it, you would really not want your kid to be the one who never brings anything, or whose parents never show up occasionally at events, or contribute in other ways. This gets me every time, because I remember how clueless I was when I worked (so this is kind of a headsup to those still working not to make the same mistake as me <ducks head> people are really, really serious about being supportive of their kids’ schooling projects). And really it hasn’t much to do with grades – it has everything to do with me not wanting my kid to feel like I value his school activities any less <cringe><various signs to ward off evil> So sending interesting stuff in I thought was a pretty good idea esp for the parents who had to be away at work more…..

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5) OK this week’s 5-second skit is titled Welcoming Committee.

a: The Miss is there to greet Rockstar off the bus (long story involving our helper being off on emergency immigration business for 4 hours for the third time in 2 weeks, which means instead of the Miss being at home napping, she’s outside because I have to be… and there was an epic vomit-in-stroller incident too, oh how I hate the smell of rancid milk-vomit)

b: Scene 2 involves a plot twist. In case you thought the Miss is simply Princess of the Whole Household – when she’s not asleep after he gets back from school, she insists on waiting for Rockstar to finish his bath so she can hand him his clothes. She especially loves Thank You’s from the bro. (Speaking of which, my “threat” of choice when she misbehaves in class is “I’m telling Ko-ko”. Y’know, because Ko-ko is a lot more anal about school than Kings. She misbehaves less if she’s had a glimpse of him in pre-school too, but in a good way i.e. she’s happy, not stressy; unfortunately Rockstar has to be in his own school most days she has her classes, otherwise we’d just always break out the Secret Weapon For Keeping Her In Check…)

c: And…. there are the pajama pants.

And have a good weekend dears 🙂