Category Archives: Education

Chess Miss Phoebe

Posted on by

Yep, five years old and now playing chess. since yesterday (31 Oct 2010, for the record). Why not. I’d put out a chess set on my coffee table, part decoration & part to see what she’d think about it (or for others on the pot luck night to play)… and within several hours Phoebe asked me to teach her. Ok!

We first went over the names of the pieces and their basic moves… of course you can make up a cool story about a castle, so that’s all pretty easy to remember. The moves are not too difficult except for the knight (horse) which can be a bit tricky to get right.

We’ve already played two games since, and she’s doing pretty well. With her story mind, she’s decided she doesn’t like the bishops much and so she’s giving them away early on in the game. I said that’s probably not a good idea as she might need those pieces even if she don’t like them – but heck she can play lots and figure it all out in her own way. Exploring is fun, and using your brain at the same time is fabulous!

(apparently my good friend Georg Richter -chess grand master or somesuch- started at age 4, so there ya go)

Statistics with a 4yo

Posted on by

I believe school is very important, but I also think that kids learn lots of (if not most) important stuff from their parents, if they get to spend time with them. This just happens throughout a day going about regular business (don’t have to be special “quality” time), but I make a point of challenging things and just encouraging my little smurfette to think. Here’s a typical evolution of fun and education…

While waiting for the bus (to school), we were spotting cars coming over the hill and trying to predict the colour of the next car. Phoebe would guess and also “wish” for the next car to be a certain colour, or for the bus to hurry up. So I asked her whether you can actually “control” what comes over the hill next… she thought about that briefly, laughed, and reckoned no (good insight already).

I said well, I can guess in such a way that I “win” more often, and proved it. A next time we took a pen and paper, and tallied the # of cars coming past of each colour. So now the 4yo actually knows, and understands from practical example/application, that you can make a more educated guess about something by doing some fun research (e.g. it’s not quite random), but also that you can’t directly control, influence or otherwise magic most things.

By the way, the car colour popularity at the moment is, in descending order: white, silver, black, blue, red, and other – with other also containing grey which could possibly be on its own soon as it appears to be getting more popular.