Spore!

There’s a new game coming out this fall (September 7th if you’re counting) which promises to be, well, awesome.  It’s called SPORE.  They’ve been talking about it / developing it for a few years now, and I have been waiting with bated breath.

Right now, you can download a trial /demo version of the Spore Creature Creator.  All you get to do in it is makes creatures for Spore, but it’s awesome enough that just that seems good enough.   Also, you can download the full version for $10.  We spent hours fiddling with creatures yesterday.

Spore is a multi-genre “massively single-player online game” under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

Munchkin!

Yesterday we got a new board game called Munckin and played it with the boys.  We started about 9 pm and didn’t actually finish the game (one game!) until about 1 AM!  We really are late night gamers now!  ;-D

Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run.

Here are the rules.  Basically, it’s a card game, with each card playing off of each other.  And it’s FUN!

3 to 6 players… I would say the more the merrier.  There are also several expansion packs (which we have a strong urge to buy ALL of) which will make the game more interesting… imagine combining the main decks (basic adventuring) with a super-spy theme or a Cthulu theme!

This morning when I woke up, the boys were quietly playing it on the living room floor. 

Meanwhile, here are some links I’ve collected recently…

• A floorplan of Sherlock Holmes’ house
• A picture of Nagasaki, before and after the bomb
• Table with built-in double-secret box
• 10 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Some interesting words…

• cingulomania - n. a desire to hold another in one’s arms
• basorexia - n. a craving to kiss

Apples to Apples; Monkey Pony Monster

First off, here are a couple of pictures of the cats:

That would be Raisins.

And Peanut.

Most of the rest of this post will be about a new game we played, called  Apples to Apples.

You can read through the rules here, but basically, it is about comparisons, and matching descriptive words with nouns.  A good vocabulary and knowledge building game, without the kids knowing they are learning.

Does this boy look like he is learning?

Or this one?

Here’s an example comparison (we only had 3 players, so the boys put down cards and I judged)…

What’s more scenic - an oil spill or a trailer park?

Are Flying Monkeys normal?

And lastly, there was the Genetic Engineering card:

The original subtext on the card was “What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a potato?” but I scratched that out and replaced it with What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a PONY?” in honor of the Jonathan Coulton song, SkullCrusher Mountain…

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Tuesday morning

Yesterday, the boys stayed home and were schooled by Dad, who taught them about probability and the ancient Sumerians, among other things.  Apparently some sort of experiment involving chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and a microwave was involved.

I was extremely tired yesterday after a long night playing Sim City Societies (damn you, SimCity!), so of course as soon as I had the chance last night, I slept played Sim City again.  Not as late, but enough for me to regret it in the morning.  I have a Sim City hangover I think.

Dad discovered a tick in Boy #1’s hair today, leftover from the farm trip last week no doubt.  It was successfully removed by Dr. Dad.

Mental Detox / TV Turnoff

I had to take a test for school last night (online), and work on some stuff for work, so thought it would be easier if I let the kids play on the computer / Wii while I did so.  Plus, they’ve been really good since we started this new regime, so they deserved some rewarding…

It worked - they were quietly amused while I worked, taking turns between the Wii and the computer.  Even when it was time for it to end, they barely resisted and said their “Yes, mom”’s.  Then it was reading time and OH how they had changed.  While not directly whining about not being on the computer that very moment, everything out of their mouths after the unplugging was a whine… or when they weren’t whining, they were annoyingly energetic and more physical with each other.

So, I think we learned an important lesson here.  The new regime is working and it’s best not to mess with it.

As synchronicity would have it, next week, April 21-27 is Mental Detox Week, formerly known as TV Turnoff Week.

I just added a new blog to my reading list:  Unplug Your Kids.   How fitting.  They have a little blog challenge.  I’m not technically joining this endeavor - I am not going to completely unplug (work as a network administrator would be very difficult otherwise).  But, since we are already working on this new regime, we’ve really already joined this movement, for longer than 7 days.

Sunday

Pholph’s Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 18. What is your score? Get it here.

We’re making pancakes and bacon this morning.  The soup from last night was quite good… I will be adding some of this morning’s bacon to it for good measure.  The bread turned out OK, but didn’t rise quite as well as I wanted it to.

Sim City 4

Oh yeah, and this weekend we all played Sim City 4.  I think I probably played for four hours straight at one point.  Sim City 4 is the DEVIL!  It’s a good thing it’s not on my laptop (yet!) else I’d get fired shortly.

Horde of Unschoolers

Here’s an interesting article about unschoolers who play World of Warcraft.

When we started out homeschooling the boys, we took a very rigid, curriculum based approach.  As time went on, we realized that these boys just don’t learn like that, which is one of the reasons they aren’t in school anyway.   These days we have more of an unschooling approach.  Sometimes, I see their breakthroughs in learning and their curious questions about different subjects and fill with pride.  Other times, I think we should remove all electronics from our house and make them read more!

Anyway, after reading the above article, here’s the part I gleaned the most from:

“If that sounds like a full-time proposition for parents - it is, and it should be, asserts Dr. Mike Sacken, a professor of education at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. “Boy, you can’t be casual about this!” he exclaims. “If someone wants to be able to do this, they need to be available full time, guiding the child’s inquiry-based learning. It’s not like you can leave a child alone most of the time and at the end of the day, you can do reflection with them and they’ll have discovered physics. You have to be with them all the time.” “

Of course, I work full-time, and sometimes go to school in the evenings, so I personally cannot be with them all the time - their grandma or dad is doing that.   My insight, based on this, is that when I am with them, after school, on the weekend, etc… I need to spend more time BEING with them, and being less of a lazy parent.

Weekend of legos, curses, and corned beef

Just a quick update while the weekend is fresh on my mind.

Saturday - made corned beef and cabbage in the crock pot, with excellent results, along with mashed potatoes with green onions and homemade horseradish sauce.  Had a group of people over and played the Curses game again, which again was a great hit.  Also played Othello, at which I seem to be a grandmaster.   Stayed up til about 3 am!

Sunday - we took the boys up to Chicago for an expensive visit to the LEGO store, where the boys got some new Castle sets and custom mini-figs, followed by a quick stop at the Lincoln Park zoo where we checked out the lion house, snake / small mammal house, and primate houses.  Pics to come.  The boys spent the evening building their new Lego sets while we watched Dan in Real Life on DVD.  We weren’t terribly impressed with the movie but it wasn’t bad.  More a movie about making bad decisions (thou shalt not fall in love with your brother’s girlfriend and even if you do, thou shalt not pursue it) and lying, than about love.

Pork Roast Leftovers & An Awesome Game

By the way, we took the leftovers from the Lechon Asado, cooked it up with some homemade BBQ sauce, and threw it on some roasted onion topped buns for a nice BBQ dinner (with some cole slaw, chips, potato wedges on the side).  Brother and in-laws came over to dine with us and brought 7UP cake and cherry pie.

We played an awesome game I recently acquired called Curses!.

You have two actions in each turn of this party game, the first is to draw a challenge card, which will give you an action that you must perform. It could be a role you have to act out, a story to tell, or an opinion to explain. this really doesn’t have any direct bearing on the game. It is a means to get to and then play off of the second type of card you draw at the end of your turn, which is a curse card.

The curse cards are played on other players and force them to continually perform certain actions, such as barking like a dog whenever the player to the right reads a card or hold on to the card with both hands at all times. If another player notices that you are not performing your action, you “break the curse” and turn it face down in front of you. In fairy tales, breaking a curse is a good thing, but not in this game. When you break three curses, you are eliminated from the game, although you are still available to have actions performed on (such as “The other people in the room are electrified. Each time you contact one of them you get a big shock.”)

The last player with a curse remaining wins.

I recommend this for 4+ players for the most fun.