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Yesterday, Rose and I watched Doctor Who together, as lots of people do with their kids. (For the hundredth time, no, she wasn't named after Billie Piper's character!)

We'd been eating jelly babies and Rose - who's now two and getting better and better at saying complete sentences - loved them a lot!

I decided to teach her about the Doctor and within a few minutes I had her saying, "Doctoroo like jeh-babies!"

From now on, whenever I get a (rare) Saturday night off, I'll get a bag of jelly babies.

So, my question to you all is, what have you proudly taught your children?

- Trout

I've really enjoyed teaching lots of normal social stuff, like 'pleeeesss' and 'tank-oo', and most recently shaking hands (which went down well at a wedding we were at over the weekend), but it has to be dinosaur names and associated noises/actions that has given me the most pleasure.  

With the absurdly varied colours, shapes and postures that dinosaurs are depicted as having in a kid's world, I'm always amazed that the litttle fella can pick out a triceratops and  make the appropriate charging motions, even when the subject is bright yellow and bipedal.

That, and say 'D'oh!' whenever he spots Homer.  

My two year old Joe (yes, named after that Joe) does a mean version of the Spiderman theme tune and an excellent call and response version of Black Sabbaths "The Wizard".

My 7 year old Ewan (yes, named after that Ewan), has an impressive knowledge of Jedi lore.

My ten year old, Caleb, has impressed me with this sort of thing many times, one that springs to mind was him complaining about Venom and Sandman in Spider-Man 3 and the fact that Sam Rami had said he was not going to use Venom in the movies.

hmmm, prehaps there having been no Dr Who on TV all those years is where its gone wrong ?

My eldest two I'm thinking i shoulda spent less time on 'name that obscure lichen at 40 paces' and more on "this is how you fill out a job application, this is how you find somewhere to live, and i'll dis-own you if you ever listen to 'club hits' type music".

However my third at 15 already has a job, is perfectly capable of getting somewhere to live, expressing ranty opinions on all things geeky, listens to proper music, and can still remember all the natural world stuff, and is way more boot stompy and kick arse scary than me.

So cool is she that her school nominated her for a place on a charity trek to namibia, lesotho & South Africa this summer with 25 other young people who have had to overcome 'significant difficulties' in their lives, and she made it through the selection, the only one from scotland! shes raised £700 towards it, and i'm proud as feck of her.

she'll probably kill me for writing this tho !

I do tend to teach my children a lot of science stuff, when they were younger the basics of why a plane stays in the air or how an engine works.  

More recently my son Ewan (again yes named after that Ewan) 10, will be doing the three states of matter at school.  So last week we were sat in our local coffee shop discussing what the main differences are and what they do.  We went much further than they will at school, but he got it, heat and energy make the different states. I think I was doing my higher chemistry when I learned that - since we moved our discussion onto entropy and the heat death of the universe......

My daughter is now 16 and thinks her dad dont know shit of any use, like which particular blue goes with that pair of shoes or whatever.  She now wants a job in fashion

Yer Slips

In my case it's with my nieces and nephews. I love the fact that they have a certain sense of humour that baffles and enrages their parents. They've a love of the surreal and the silly that hasn't come from their mum or their dad. I remember my niece when she was abnout six taking an interest in sreet signs and visual warnings so we went around the house looking for them. On one there was a 'not suitable for small children' sign, which is a circle with a line through it, a face with a curl of hair and 0-3. Samantha interpreted it as 'not for baby Elvis' and from then on there was a silly explanation for every sign. It drives them mad.

Matthew did even better a couple of years ago by annoying his R.E. teacher by designing an Easter card that combined two of the things she suggested. A chicken nailed to a cross.

Great thread KT, Dunno where to start mind. My little lad, Harrison (and think we can all guess who heâ??s named after!) is six in May, and the things Iâ??ve been proud to teach and the special moments weâ??ve had together in no particular order are.......
The moment he could ride his bike without the stabilizers, sounds corny I know, but to see him riding off under his own steam and the smile on his face when he realised what heâ??d done, absolutely fantastic and if any of you guys and gals remember that (I think?) Sky movies film clip/advert where Dustin Hoffman is doing the same thing? Well, thatâ??s how good it feels!
Pâ??s and Qâ??s and how polite he is in company is always good and letâ??s face it, it reflects well on a Childs upbringing if they say please and thank you and can sit at the table propery and eat with a knife and fork, sounds crazy i know but it's still something to be proud of none-the-less.
Another good â??un is building sandcastles on the beach, ok, admittedly easy to teach but something so simple and how it keeps him occupied, superb.
Reading, writing and drawing â?? constantly amazes me at his aptitude for all three, he must get it from his mother! But when he comes home from school all excited by the story heâ??s written or the picture heâ??s drawn itâ??ll be guaranteed to light up the most stressful day.
Cheers,
Rob.

...when they were younger the basics of why a plane stays in the air or how an engine works

I drive my missus potty doing this.  My son isn't yet two, but I try my best to  explain the physics, biology or chemistry of whatever it is we're doing - floating, aerating soil, flying, mixing playdough, turning water wheels,  pedalling etc.  I also try to introduce mini-experiments into play: "What happens if you do this?  Now what do you think will happen if you do this?", etc.  

I'm damn sure none of it's going in, but what  I'm really trying to do is to encourage him to think about the why of things as he's doing them.  Can't hurt.

It also really helps me think through my own understanding of things, as I find with any teaching process - I spent a happy few hours recently trying to re-understand the physics of a static wing the better to explain it.  

yes the teaching process is rather a flagellating escapade.  You say something which is basically true and then they pull it apart in their minds.  Ask you a question that you dont know the answer too, then you have to go and bloody look it up.  Its infuriating and satisfying at the same time.

Yer Slips

hmm, its wierd all that stuff has to go in there somewhere, it just seems that by their teen years they go mainstream & are more influenced by their peers, it'll be interesting to see if the early years influences start coming out again when they're in their later twenties/ thirties.

Its only now my fathers retired & had triple bypass etc, that i've gotten the chance to realise how like him i am in a billion wierd ways i never realised, & i spent a lot of my pre school years at his work with him.

My kids were all raised up to their oxters in pottery clay & paint, glitter & glue, digging dens in the woods, making mud pies for the chickens, always creating, very much a rural idyll. Seems worlds away sometimes, but i guess it all is in there somewhere.

::"A chicken nailed to a cross."

[Tea sprayed over keyboard.]

I taught my nephew (when he was a toddler) that wet leaves were not aggressive invaders from outer space.  

(He'd got some on his hands, and decided that it was time to cry and panic about the wet, sticky green things stuck to him that he couldn't shake off, so I quickly grabbed a handful and acted like it was the happiest moment of my life, at which point the burgeoning tears disappeared and he decided that wet leaves were fairly cool, and something to smile about, and play with.  Abject fear of nature: avoided.)

I know, it's not much.  Still...I was proud.

Ahhh, nephews are great- you can tell them any shit and not live with the results!

I told mine, who is 2 or 3 that if he was bad the pigeons would come and take him away. I was delighted to overhear him explaining this quite seriously to his mum a day or two later.
Didn't stop him being bad though...

I told my wee sister that if she touched my Amiga (yes, this was a while ago) then my small wooden viking toy would grow to full size and chop her to bits with his axe. She believed me.

(I should have been encouraging her to use computers.  Tut.  Bad big brother.)

was she named after the Dr Who character?

I've proudly taught loads of stuff. In  no particular order:
- about the Moomin books
- reading (taught while we were living in Japan)
- the Lord's Prayer
- how to watch the 60s Batman movie what felt like four hundred times in one month
- the chorus to 'Miss You'
- about Dr Who
- that John Howard is evil
- cricket
- football
- umm, that's all I can think of, but I'm sure there's more

oh dear, ive just remembered winding mine up, i've got a slodge of different colour in one of my eyes, and i told the kids that it was the mark of an alien mutant... and sometimes it took over... que manic cackling, yes they were scared & possibly scarred for life.  ohhh the guilt.

My dad had a crooked finger, just like the aliens in the Invaders TV show, and would often remind us of the fact.

I've always tried to make play a learning experience for cousins, younger brother, nieces and nephews. It all seems a long time ago now, and I don't see any of the youngsters very often because we're geographically dispersed.

When I do manage to visit I like to give the parents a break by occupying their kids, and they're fascinated to be told stuff at the same time, which often evokes a response of "how do you know all this stuff?" from the parents.

At Christmas we filled a merry hour with the nephews playing a Scooby-Doo haunted house board game which made me think Dalek Operation would have been a better buy. They liked the working parts, the turn-taking, and making up a new name for the villain under the ghost disguise every game because there was only one cutout.

On another occasion, the nieces spent a good deal longer at the Eden Project than they would normally have been prepared to, partly because their aunt is a botanist and they learned a lot more from the trip than they usually do.

On the down side, the missus just reminded me about the card of plastic insects we bought her other nephew one birthday, which he threw into his sandpit after his mother said, when he opened the present "Ewww! bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs wurhh hurr hurr hurr!!!! Urgh, they're horrid!" and he decided he was scared of them. Then they had to be thrown away because he was scared of going in his sandpit. Wrong lesson there, I think.

I have an odd but ingrained distaste for insects which I've been trying to kick over the years (they're fascinating creatures, but they give me the literal creeps), and I've been determined that my son won't end up the same way - thus plenty of positive ooh-ing and ahh-ing over ants, spiders (I  know, I know) and bees.  

I was delighted to watch him down at the beach yesterday following a bee around and studying it intently, but then screwed it all up by reflexively intercepting his attempt to stroke it... Crap.

I taught my mum's childminding charges to behave when I forced them to watch Snooker instead of CBBC this afternoon.

I nearly passed out laughing at the 'Chicken nailed to a cross'!

"Pâ??s and Qâ??s and how polite he is in company is always good and letâ??s face it, it reflects well on a Childs upbringing if they say please and thank you and can sit at the table propery and eat with a knife and fork, sounds crazy i know but it's still something to be proud of none-the-less. "


 I had all that from my Mum.She is very big on politeness and manners.She is a bit like that but its her background.I hated it most of the time but it was all worthwile as i am the same now [except for swearing ] and if i had kids i would be exactly the same with them as its an advantage in life.


 Not Crazy.


 I was always taught that it was alright just to eat with a fork and not use a knife which is American or Canadian apparently and i still dont to this day.


 Dropping Litter :  I was shouted with an explanation [I wouldnt accept something if it wasnt explained ] at for doing that aged 12 and never did it again.


 Its definatly not a myth that you inherit their values and end up like them.

"I was always taught that it was alright just to eat with a fork and not use a knife which is American or Canadian apparently and i still dont to this day."

S'right. You just go right ahead and stab that rump steak with your fork and nibble bits off it. To hell with what those darned Canadians might think!

 Steak Knives. Thats different.

Well, Tiny Tips* is incredibly polite. We were at the Glasgow Subway Festival the other week and he had a go on a Penny Farthing. He said thank you to the man as he got off and the man with the bike said "First one today".


He's also incredibly tidy and always switches things off at the socket etc. when he's finished.

A bit like our Milkman actually...

I don't know how long these lessons will last as his big brother and sister are incredibly rude and messy and wasteful so I've obviously failed to teach them anything at all.

* His real name is Daniel.  Named after his Uncle Daniel, my little brother. And the last time I cried was at his wedding when I was doing my best man's speech and explaining to everyone that he was named after "this Daniel".

Oh and this is getting off topic but another example of their daft sense of humour was when we went to the local gallery to look at  paintings by their grandad and their uncle. Samantha stood admiring a fire exit plaque telling Matthew of the simplicity of the form, the vibrancy of the colour, and what it was trying to express. Eventually an elderly gent explained that it was a safety sign and Samantha reasoned that that's the genius of the artist at work.

Matthew also waited til the attendent wasn't looking and swapped two of the plaques around, substiting 'Portrait of the artist' with 'Mitsy, my Staffie'. Technically an act of naughtiness but very, very well chosen.

This thread is a thing of beauty.

I wonder if chicken tastes better after being nailed to a cross...

- Trout

Digging seems to be the most valuable skill I have taught the two oldest(Kate 6 and Brendan 4).
I was telling them about Lepracauns on the way to bed the other night, The next day they had dug a sizeable hole for their age next to a hawthorn, looking for the Lepracauns House.

I usually put in a few ridges of veg every year, and this eve they found some spuds that hadnt been dug last year, an proceeded to dig a bloddy big hole again. The plan for tomorrow apparently, is more of the same.

David

I really enjoy the way kids expose the quirks of language.

I take my 2-year-old swimming on a Sunday in the swish centre up in Blanchardstown that has a wave pool. A klaxon announces the periodic switching on of the wave machine, and there's a general scramble to get into the water.  "Waves, lad, Waves!" I cry and scoop him off the water slide and head for open water.  But as soon as we get into the melee and are bobbing up and down with the rest of the human frogspawn, the boy starts saying "Bye-bye! Bye-bye!".  Puzzled, I ask him if he wants to get out, has he had enough?  Does he not like the waves?  A shake of the head and more furious "bye-bye!".  So I go to take him out, and he struggles to get back in...  

Then I notice what he's doing - he's not just saying bye-bye, he's actually waving.  Wave to the waves, lad.

I remember this one thing I taught my daughter some time back. If you want to know whether the stars  are stars or satellites floating in orbit, you should hold your hand up to your face. Hold it still, stand still and if the stars move past you hand in a matter of seconds, its a satellite. Or a plane.

Simple but great when the connection is made.

i guess i always took P's & Q's for granted, i know we'd've been shot if we exhailed loudly in public, so i taught mine manners ( tho missed out the clean tidy colour co-ordinated freshly scrubbed bit...mine were kids with jam on their faces & mud on their knees ),

what a shock working with Young Carers, whom some don't have a lot of parenting, underdeveloped language skills cos no-one ever talked to them, that sort of thing.... We were on a 3 day respite to the city, sit down meal, at posh as fook Pizzahut, NIGHTMARE!! these teenagers couldnt use knives & forks, didnt know how to sit still, were literally throwing food around, NO idea what P & Q's are.
 But of course the other side of the coin is if you want a hand with something, or if theres a crisis, Young carers are wonderful whereas teens who've been raised 'with' stuff will complain OMG they might scratch a fingernail and like FYI thin crust pizza is soooo gross.

"thin crust pizza is soooo gross"

Heh! They've even got that wrong!

Mini-huff when asked if he wanted a rug in his room answered with a smile: 'yeah, it will really pull the room together'

Proudhuff indeed

The Dude abides.

'yeah, it will really pull the room together'

Now that's a legacy any parent would be proud of.  You ain't raising no nihilist there, Huff.

  Its alright to eat pizza with your fingers as thats what Italians do at the dinner table .Real italian pizza is sort of floppy as the base is thin so just pick  up a slice ,fold it and eat it.

 Difficult to do with Pizza Hut stodge though.


 I cant get into the idea of eating a burger with a knife and fork if its in a restaurant .Wierd.Unless i am hopelessly wrong its alright to eat with your fingers at the dinnertable.Just depends what it is.


 Some of the manners and etiquette thing goes too far into Keeping Up Appearences territory if they get it wrong.


 I was taught to respect living things like birds and trees and flowers and all the rest of it.Lesson learnt aged 9 when i caught a few small fish from a stream and took them home in a bag full of water like a goldfish from the funfair.It was explained why this was wrong and i had to take them back to where they came from.

I cant get into the idea of eating a burger with a knife and fork if its in a restaurant

With you there, our kid.

All sorts.  Most recently I started to teach  him to program (conceptually) using a training tool made by MIT called scratch.

Quite pleased with his enthusiams for it, he's really grasping it and staring to develop simple flash games.

Young carers? More power to you, Bou. We've been helping out our local group through Round Table events and some of the stories we've heard have been pretty heartbreaking.

- Trout

Does anyone have any anecdotal advice regarding talking about - or even just bringing up - the subject of mortality with younger kids?

Does anyone have any anecdotal advice regarding talking about - or even just bringing up - the subject of mortality with younger kids?
 (hope I got the italics right there). ummm, I just answer questions honestly when they ask. I haven't had to bring the subject up, since nobody has died so far, but there is a period where they're very interested in it.

I taught my boy how to do 'the horns' when he was three.

"Let's see your rock hands Gabe"

My youngling has been a dab hand with a lightsaber since he was 18 months, with regular duels breaking out across the landing before bath time.  Insists on pulling the curtains so that the glow is more visible!

mortality ?   well pets are handy for that, tho be prepared for the loss of that first hamster / gerbil to be pretty devestating.

Theres techniques to help a child deal with the death of a parent or family member... but you can mail me seperate for that heavy shit.

meanwhile the pets thing can go a bit wrong....
Jessie cat had had 3 kittens, which me & the children helped birth, the last one would have died without our midwifery... awww. a little cute grey one became middle daughters ( age 6 or so ?), 'lilly'. One day we'd been out, returned, middle daughters walking towards the house out in front of me, 1m from the house gate, by the road there appears to be a mess...
daughter starts screaming, recognising grey fluff in the pink smear, completely flattened spattered kitten, it was literally a scrape off the road job, she was still screaming, there was a tooth, a bit of an ear, urghhhh the tongue...
months later i found she had a shrine to lilly and would go hysterical if you went near it...Not a good death.

 She became rather fixated with her next cat & is still convinced that it was her angel/ deamon, and yes she meowws a lot instead of talking in human language, hmmm maybe pets & death & children isnt such a good idea ?

maybe pets & death & children isnt such a good idea ?

Nah, even if it's painful it has to be a good thing, because it's something so integral to being part of the world.

I remember my first dog being put to sleep when I was 6, and it seemed devastating then.  However, having my second dog put to sleep when I was 21 was far, far worse - I still feel like crying when I think about it.  Now at 37 I'm dreading the imminent demise of my third, and I watch my parents wondering about getting another dog, and being reluctant because it will probably outlive them.  That seems even worse.

Gaiman put it quite well, with his idea of every new kitten you hold in your hand containing the certainty of putting an old cat to sleep. It has to make you value their lives more because you know they're finite, and it has to help you understand that so is everyone's.

SOBBB !!  i had to put Rosie dog down in January aged 11+, and then in Feb poor old Finn aged 15... IT was Fucking awful!
The remaining 1 dog is really lonely & has gone mental ( er ), first time he was left alone, he chewed & smashed his way through double glazing in panic to find someone...

So its weird, I've now got less children & animals around than ever before, which is the natural progression of things & it feels so ...quiet & empty a house ! Ive suggested we foster a tribe of dysfunctional orphans but my better half isnt convinced.

My eldest is at an interesting stage right now.

While he's determined that he knows everything, and was even claiming 'Stop making my learn- I'm not in school!' during our last adventure. He still continued to ask questions and listen to answers though...

Micro bolt and Nano-bolt both got fancy rats at christmas, and are very taken with them. To the extent that they have joined the midlands Rat club and attended a show (Think Crufts for Fat rats) a couple of weeks ago. I am so not looking forward to the inevitable for these.

As for the rest of it- Mini-Bolt does indeed know more than me and is quite prepared to make sure I know it too. Bless him.

Bolt-01

 Baphomet .


 You get a lot of famous politicians in the US doing  the same thing on stage.


 Perhaps Hillary Clinton and GW BUsh are closet Cradle Of Filth fans.

:-)

My kids genetically are not my own - that aside they are MY kids in everything else, their 'sperm-donor' (SD) as we fondly call him is not around and will never be.

I'm currently helping Mrs Larf build back their confidence in many things as well as school. Mini-larf number 3 needs a massive boost in confidence at school after SD used to tell them that they were a waste of space and nothing would come of them if they tried at school. Hence he's a trier in everything but has his SATs coming up. Mrs L and I have been helping him do test papers, and really helping to push him and let him know he CAN do it, he can succeed and do well - he's an intelligent lad, and quite frankly an amazing kid in many, many ways. I personally don't like our school system, some kids don't 'fit-in' to the way people expect them to learn ML3 is like this - he's amazingly creative, thoughtful, polite and clever in his own way - not anyone elses. So in essence we've had to show him how to temper the way he learns to try and fit in, well I've never fitted in in my entire life so that's a challenge...

Anyway I digress, on Friday I came home after being at a convention for three days, away from the kids and Mrs Larf to be told that he'd won the school trophy that week for most improved at SATs!!!!

We have worked, and continue to work, so hard with ML3 on his SATs but what a brilliant surprise to come home to, it makes it all worth while - even if it does mean fitting in to move forward.

I taught Mini-Brows a lot of her early phrases- including, "Groove it daddio" and, "can you dig it, baby".

I was particularly proud of those- but I also taught her useful stuff like 'please' and 'thank you' as well.  Amazingly, I also go out of my way to try and teach her the importance of being kind to others as well.  I will fully understand if nobody believes that last bit- but it's the truth.

:)

Well done eyebrows!

Mine were taught from an early age such timeless classics as, 'Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!'

Oh, oh - you are showing your age - "Groove it daddio." - "can you dig it baby.", as for being polite it just goes to show you have it in you JEB and you should not be afraid to let the inner-helpful-kind and generous person out. Don't be ashamed of your feelings, let them out... :-)

'Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!'

I will wake my son form his bed this instant to begin this patented indoctrination programme - never occurred to me to gift him a suite of Python insults.  

Then my work here is done!

Up Up and Away!!

I teach Army cadets twice a week in all manner of things and get a great kick when Cadets Ive taught get their badges and qualifications. Have yet to teach them how to kill people with your thumbs 8-)

Oh the irony I'm sat outside cadets in worksop waiting to collect my eldest from cadets and just read your post... Weird

"...and you should not be afraid to let the inner-helpful-kind and generous person out"

I get a (admittedly deserved) bad rep in this place- but kindness is actually my default setting.  I just struggle when it comes to fools.

:D

Hmmph, know the feeling can't stand piss artists or people who are not straight with you, I prefer down the earth honest bollocks and if people don't like it they can fuck off :-)

kindness default ?

don't believe a word of it ! he's one bad arsed scary mo-fo a veritable sociopath & in no way sweet and cuddly, nope.

"I just struggle when it comes to fools."

Bugger.

I just struggle when it comes to fools.


Yup. I have... problems when it comes to wilful ignorance or plain stupidity in people.

>Oh the irony I'm sat outside cadets in worksop waiting to collect my eldest from cadets and just read your post... Weird

what star level are they?

I have just come back from visiting my two-year-old nephews who previously had no idea I even existed, since it had been a while.

One thing I did was talk about broccoli for most of 24 hours, starting with the two heads of broccoli that were in the shopping basket of plastic play food I brought with me - and for dinner the next night they had fish pie with broccoli, and they ate ALL their broccoli.

Another thing I taught them was that the word 'robot' can be substituted for any two syllable noun in any nursery rhyme. It started when, at bedtime, I was asked to sing 'Incey Wincey Spider' for the fourth time, at which point I refused and offered instead to sing to them about the 'Incey Wincey robot' that climbed up the water spout. Later on, Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to fetch her poor robot a bone.

I also taught them 'Two Little Dickie-birds,' which they hadn't heard before and wanted to hear over and over again. 'One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive' also proved popular.

My youngest had a friend round for tea after school today. Lovely kid- polite, friendly, chatty, etc etc. Walked into our house and spent the rest of the visit staring at all our stuff asking why we had "so much scariness around". The look on his face when he finally noticed the werewolf head above the mantlepiece that was staring at him was brilliant.

Anyway- during dinner, I asked him if he wanted ketchup, and in doing so pointed to the ketchup bottle. That small movement was the cue for my back to suddenly go into mind-shatteringly agonised spasm, at which point for some reason best known only to my pain-receptors and their relationship with the language part of my brain, I literally shouted the odd phrase "BUGGEROOO!".

Needless to say that's what I taught both my boys and their friend today.

SBT

My 6yr old Nephew Adam is very much a product of my influence. Whether that is a good thing or not is debatable though. :)

When it was the summer break between nursery and starting infant school I bought a shedload of KS1 books and sat and did exercises with him for half an hour a day. I also encouraged the 'having a story at bedtime' instead of the 'having a dvd at bedtime' that was his habit. This has now progressed to where he will go to bed an hour before he has to in order to read his book in peace.

I've also tried to change his viewing habits. Doctor Who was not a part of his life until I got involved and now he is an avid Who and SJA fan. I fell asleep on the couch one Saturday afternoon while he was on his xbox and when I woke up he'd turned off the game and put on my 'Robot' DVD. I thought it might have been a bit slow for him but he was engrossed. That was actually his first experience of regeneration, so it paved the way nicely for Tennant (His Doctor) leaving.

One of his favourite shows is Thundercats, which I foisted upon him when I got tired of the endless Pokemon/Yugi Oh/Gormiti/Bakugan/Dinosaur King clones. That he loved that was a proud moment, 'cos it was hands down my fave when I was young.

Next step is getting him into comics. He's big into Buffy, (Merciful Zeus! is his current catchphrase. It's brilliant) which I introduced him to in an effort to make him less prone to nightmares (he got freaked out by Sbrina the Teenage Witch halloween episodes - something had to be done). I figured the jokes and the action would ease him past the horror. Seems to have worked, although his Mam is undecided as to it's suitability for his age. Anyway, he's now reading my Buffy GNs. I figure, that'll hook him on the form (even if a big part will just be admiring the art, at least for now) and then I'll hit him up with a bit of old school twothy goodness.

I'm not sure how much my sister appreciates my efforts, 'cos she has been a bit scathing of my geeky tendencies in the past, but she's tolerating me so far.

Number One Son, two at the end of April, knows a Stegosaurus when he sees one (and Triceratops, and T. Rex).  I'll be starting on the pantheon of 2000AD characters asap (although he already had Charlie, Hero of Northpool on his 2nd birthday card).

:)

My eldest (5 next week) went to the heavily restored tower-house of Ashtown Castle on a school trip yesterday.  Having carefully fostered his interest in active defense-in-depth for some years now, I asked him had they seen any murderholes (any decent boy loves a good murderhole).  "No".  What about arrowslits?  (The next best thing) "No.  I think they replaced them all with windows when they rebuilt it.  There were a few musketloops though - so I think it must have been built near the end of the castle times".  Warm glow of parental pride ensues, tinged with professional sympathy for the guide.

How nice to see this thread back. :)

I still watch Doctor Who with Rose, and we still eat jellybabies.

And last week, I taught my 18-month-old son to say "Dredd".

- Trout

 Last weekend ,how to find ants under a stone and the difference between Swallows and House Martens.

Quote from: maryanddavid on 14 May, 2011, 12:01:57 AM
...and the difference between Swallows and House Martens.

Go on then, share.

Called Up, Ill see you sir!

Its fairly simple, A house marten builds on the gable of the house, like little beehives, we had 3 on one gable last year. The swallow builds in shed and barns, normally on collar ties or on th inside eves of sheds, we only had one in the shed last year, but in my fathers old hay shed there was at least 10 nests on the various beams. The house martens tails are a bit shorter too.

David

I remember the difference as SWALLOWS have long FORKED tails,i(mage of eating of a fork) its the only way along with mnenomics I remeber anything. Recently saw Derren Brown and he uses a similar type of thing to remember 'stuff'

House Martin:



Swallow:



Not to be confused with either...

Sandmartin:



Or Swifts:



You can print those out as a twitching guide for the wee'ans  :D

M

Ah, I see.  I had it totally wrong:





Seriously though, thanks all - very informative.

the cloud game ( the one where you find shapes things in the clouds),she dont do that with the wife its a dad thing

Working in a school I have always tried to advise the kids to always do the right thing however uncomfortable it is to do.

Quote from: spireite68 on 16 May, 2011, 02:17:54 PM
Working in a school I have always tried to advise the kids to always do the right thing however uncomfortable it is to do.

I'd just recommend some lube myself.



(Sorry - the shock of losing Roger has left me... similar).