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Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

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Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#91

Post by protonbob »

landemva wrote: post #70
social_quotient wrote: post #65

Might be off topic but a nugget from having two girls (5 and 11). Kids don’t care about budget or how much things cost. We have toys we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on only to have the near free to free one be a hit. I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you. Or said differently, to the extent it effects you it will effect them. Kids will generally have fu…

Yes, time with dad. Get outside and walk or hike. Play in dirt. Explore plants and flowers. Splash in a creek. My daughter really enjoyed the affordable bow&arrow with foam target.

All this is making me want to have kids sooner.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#92

Post by credit_guy »

None4U wrote: post #83
credit_guy wrote: post #76

My son is 12 y/o, and he's into Minecraft. Yesterday he discovered the server mc.openredstone.org. He spent all day yesterday and about one hour today, and he ended up building a 4-bit adder. On this server players learn how to build logic gates, and mix them so they eventually build CPUs. It's fully gamified, so beginners are called "students" and more advanced players are called "builders". To become a "builder" yo…

Quoted post unavailable.

A little bit. I keep an eye on what he’s doing there, which is quite easy, as he just won’t stop talking about it. It’s also an opportunity for me to teach him, but in a way that he finds exciting. If one day I had decided to teach him XOR or NAND, he would’ve found it very boring. This way, he comes to me with questions, and I can pick up a piece of paper and show him what a truth table is, and he soaks it up. He feels like he’s cheating a bit at the game, because he has a Dad who helps him on the side, but no one knows, so he progresses very quickly and everyone thinks he’s very smart.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#93

Post by Bayko »

protonbob wrote: post #91
landemva wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, time with dad. Get outside and walk or hike. Play in dirt. Explore plants and flowers. Splash in a creek. My daughter really enjoyed the affordable bow&arrow with foam target.

All this is making me want to have kids sooner.

You need to get off of Hackernews first sir

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#94

Post by mlyle »

None4U wrote: post #83
credit_guy wrote: post #76

My son is 12 y/o, and he's into Minecraft. Yesterday he discovered the server mc.openredstone.org. He spent all day yesterday and about one hour today, and he ended up building a 4-bit adder. On this server players learn how to build logic gates, and mix them so they eventually build CPUs. It's fully gamified, so beginners are called "students" and more advanced players are called "builders". To become a "builder" yo…

Quoted post unavailable.

IMO, much better to progressively teach your kids about safety (online and off) and to do your best to monitor/keep track of what's going on, and ensure you have good lines of communication open with your kids and have them know that they can come to you without reprisal...

than to try and keep them in a bubble and eliminate all possibility they could meet someone predatory.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#95

Post by actfrench »

If it’s helpful, we built a site during the pandemic where we sourced ideas from parents on how to keep kids engaged while working from home. It was #2 on Product Hunt.

Enrichmentactivities.org

My favorite activity is quality time outdoors . If there is any hike you could do, a beach or a park, that’s always a winner. Spending time in nature being physically active is a great way to keep both of you engaged and spending time together. You could also plan a picnic and make recipes together.

Is there something she’d like to make ? Go on YouTube and figure out how to make a boomerang, tie dye shirts, learn to knit, do origami or sew.

Maybe your daughter could even help you with your job search. Kids, especially 11 year olds are whip smart and love to engage in grownup stuff

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#97

Post by mlyle »

circlefavshape wrote: post #49
mabbo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I ask him what he wants to do he says "I don't know" A blogger I read a while ago (I completely forget who) wrote something about this that stuck with me: if you ask a kid if they want pancakes or cereal for breakfast, they'll pick one and be delighted. If you ask them what they'd like to have without presenting options, this can lead to a complete meltdown. Picking from infinite options, forcing them to think…

Sounds plausible, but IME doesn't actually work with real kids

Eh. I'm a teacher these days, and it works with real kids. With my own kids, who know the range of possibility and aren't quite so believing in my authority as that of a real teacher, it's still effective but less so.

[It works to get class buy-in, even if you are offering meh choice A and awful choice B. A class that has chosen "A" will be more engaged doing it than if you just told them to do A...

but you'd better be ready to do 'B' if the class decides to be contrarian. Once, they really wanted to do the quiz to show that they really -do- know what we've been doing, and if I hadn't had the quiz prepped and ready I'd have been in trouble...]

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#98

Post by nrjames »

noisy_boy wrote: post #52
nrjames wrote: post #12

I did the Mark Rober Creative Engineering class with my daughters and we all had a blast. We made a apple slicing guillotine, a s’more assembly machine, and a robotic arduino-controlled bird. We finished the class 18 months ago and they still talk about it. They were 7 and 9 yrs old at the time. The key is to not do it all at once but to pace out the videos and exercises and truly do when he teaches, from brainstormi…

Just that day I was showing Arduino to my daughter - I know very little about hardware so we would be both learning if we went with the starter kit (that fact made her happy). Thanks for sharing this.

Sure! I ended up getting the official arduino starter kit and the Elagoo (?) kit Rober mentions in the class list. The Elagoo one is more versatile, but they complemented each other. A lot of learning, for us, came from finding the Elagoo and official projects and tutorials and completing them. There are many good guides and examples, but you may have to dig a bit on the Elagoo and official sites to find them. We had a lot of fun! It’s similar to legos, in a sense, with a little more thinking required and some cool interactive results.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#99

Post by dukeofdoom »

Go Kayaking with her. A camera and lenses and you could do wildlife or macro photography or fishing on your trips. Great Exercise and connection with nature. If you get something like a DJI Mini drone you can capture something people rarely see. Maybe you could even start a youtube channel with all the unique footage. Which would require video editing and photoshop skills. Not even that expensive:

Mirrorless camera $500

Drone $400

Two kayaks ~$1000

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#100

Post by mlyle »

mcv wrote: post #74
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works well with mine. He’s got 3 choices most mornings.

It doesn't with mine, I'm afraid. I frequently give them 1-3 options and they shoot them all down (even pancakes?!). Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

OK, sure, offering a choice of what to eat when they're not excited about the idea of eating isn't going to generate a response. I almost never ate breakfast as a kid... unless there was leftover cake or something I could sneak...
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