Thursday, May 18, 2006
Lattes, Labradoodles, Legos and Little People
OK, so finally Wawa fixed their machine, and I'm standing there, serving myself the perfect latte as I overhear two people discussing the Labradoodle, which is a crossbreed between a Labrador Retriever and a Standard Poodle. In theory, this is a good idea, because you hope to get the temperament of the mild-natured lab combined with the hypoallergenic properties of the non-shedding poodle. I begin to wonder... what happens if you end up with a dog that sheds as much as a lab but is as mean as a poodle?
Speaking of which, can anyone guess which was responsible for more bites in 2004, cats or pit bulls? The correct answer, by the way, does not earn you a donut. But I digress.
So I did a little self-examination today and found myself a fully-grown, married-with-two-kids, homeowner-with-a-real-job kind of guy, still playing with Legos and fascinated with collecting Little People.
My mother asked me to come in and teach her "Talent Development Clusters" for fourth through sixth graders on "Higher Order Thinking" using Lego robotics. Unfortunately, my mom teaches in the district that has been all over the news recently for its financial woes, and they don't have the money to actually purchase the kits needed for the robotics aspect, so we are really just playing with basic block Legos.
The first week, I held a competition to see who could build the tallest and strongest structure to hold a bottle of water off the table (to save it from the coming "flood"). The second week, gave them a little exercise to develop their skills in following explicit directions by seeing if they could build my little rocketship. Yesterday, we took the rocketship and added wheels then had them make upgrades to see whose design would go the farthest off a ramp. The winner rolled 108 inches past their initial attempt.
Oh, yeah... and we've got the big birthday party thing coming up. So far, zero children are planning to attend. So that's gonna be fun. We're going with a Little People theme, and I've been obsessed with watching lots of Little People on Ebay. I've even created a new blog - fisherpricelittlepeople.blogspot.com - to catalogue the Little People that we've collected so far! Not counting the new ones that are in their packaging still, I think we are at 101 (counting only one for each set of two animals on the ark, since I photograph them together... otherwise it would be 111). I'm not sure how many more I've got coming in the mail, but soon I'm going to need to build an addition on my house for the Little People.
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Speaking of which, can anyone guess which was responsible for more bites in 2004, cats or pit bulls? The correct answer, by the way, does not earn you a donut. But I digress.
So I did a little self-examination today and found myself a fully-grown, married-with-two-kids, homeowner-with-a-real-job kind of guy, still playing with Legos and fascinated with collecting Little People.
My mother asked me to come in and teach her "Talent Development Clusters" for fourth through sixth graders on "Higher Order Thinking" using Lego robotics. Unfortunately, my mom teaches in the district that has been all over the news recently for its financial woes, and they don't have the money to actually purchase the kits needed for the robotics aspect, so we are really just playing with basic block Legos.
The first week, I held a competition to see who could build the tallest and strongest structure to hold a bottle of water off the table (to save it from the coming "flood"). The second week, gave them a little exercise to develop their skills in following explicit directions by seeing if they could build my little rocketship. Yesterday, we took the rocketship and added wheels then had them make upgrades to see whose design would go the farthest off a ramp. The winner rolled 108 inches past their initial attempt.Oh, yeah... and we've got the big birthday party thing coming up. So far, zero children are planning to attend. So that's gonna be fun. We're going with a Little People theme, and I've been obsessed with watching lots of Little People on Ebay. I've even created a new blog - fisherpricelittlepeople.blogspot.com - to catalogue the Little People that we've collected so far! Not counting the new ones that are in their packaging still, I think we are at 101 (counting only one for each set of two animals on the ark, since I photograph them together... otherwise it would be 111). I'm not sure how many more I've got coming in the mail, but soon I'm going to need to build an addition on my house for the Little People.
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