My daughter and I will be on TV this week, 8pm local time Wednesday night (Nov. 14) on most PBS stations. That’s when our “GeekDad” segment will air, sometime during that night’s Wired Science program.
Wired Science is a collaboration between Wired (my employer) and KCET (a PBS station in LA). I’m not really involved, [...]
Thanks to repeated viewings of Jimmy Neutron, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Scooby Doo, Clara is now obsessed with the idea of building a super-duper clubhouse that contains, among other things, trap doors, secret pools, a waterfall, and levers that make things happen (like pop people into the air). But most of all, she [...]
Last night Clara was working on her homework, part of which involved math problems — simple addition. (Math homework! In kindergarten! But that’s another post.) 2+2, 2+3, 6+0, etc. Karen set her up with a handful of clementines on the table and her homework folder. For 2+3, Clara put two clementines on one side of [...]
At the start of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, near the McLaren Lodge at Fell and Stanyan, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition holds a monthly “Freedom from Training Wheels” event to help kids learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. On Sundays the drive is closed to car traffic, except for the occasional [...]
Clara came home from the library yesterday with a copy of The Brain, by Seymour Simon. Last night she and I sat on the couch as she flipped through the book, showing me what the brain looks like dissected, in MRI, in models. I pointed out different parts of the brain. Karen quizzed her on [...]
Clara, last night: “Daddy, do you know what the best part of Halloween is?”
“No, Clara, what’s that?”
“The part where the candy goes into your bucket.”
She confirmed that she likes that part even better than the part where you actually eat the candy. I have to say I agree.
sycamore,
uploaded by bitmapr.
A month or two ago, we were walking through a parking lot on our way to Fresh Choice when we walked by a young sycamore tree. There were a few sycamore seed pods lying on the ground: Small, round, hard green things with spikes sticking out all over.
Clara [...]
Two weeks into her Spanish-language immersion kindergarten class, Clara already knows at least three songs, ten separate color words, how to say she needs to go to the bathroom, how to count to thirteen, and the days of the week. Her pronunciation, while still quirky, already has more in common with a native speaker than [...]
Clara’s latest obsession is the Magnetic Fields song “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side,” which also happens to be my favorite. She heard the very beginning of it yesterday, just as I was switching it off, and demanded to hear the whole thing. Then she listened to it a few times. Last night [...]