Wednesday October 31, 2007 Instant Answers
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I've mentioned this before. It's wonderful having the power of the Internet to instantly find answers to your kids questions. |
A couple cases in point.
We were "reading" some Calvin and Hobbes cartoons last night, and we came across the word donor. I of course pronounced it dough-ner, and Duncan came back and told me I was wrong and it should be don-er. He was emphatic. We had quite the argument about it. So I went to the MSN encarta dictionary and typed in donor. I then clicked on the audible link. Several times. With a grin on my face. "But how come one of Santa's reindeers is called don-er?" he replied. One more Google search quickly showed him that the reindeer in question is called Donner. (It's actually Donder but I didn't want to go there just before bedtime). "Ah!" he said. He was finally convinced.
We went back to his bedroom and continued reading.
Then we had an earthquake. I initially thought it was a cat or heavy squirrel thundering over the roof. We get a lot of that. But no, we could see his lamp stand and a bookcase shaking away. We gave it about fifteen minutes, then I looked it up. It was of magnitude 5.6 but only about 12 miles away from us. Very exciting for a 9 year old (and his Dad).
Now if we hadn't been living in the age of instant answers I would never have been able to satisfactorily reply to a young child's questions so quickly.
( Oct 31 2007, 07:52:13 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [5]
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Ok I give you the instant earthquake gratification, but you could still have had a teachable moment by cracking open a dictionary and exploring what the diacritical marks in the pronunciation guide mean :). Score one for old school.
Posted by Alastair Neil on October 31, 2007 at 09:45 AM PDT #
> ... cracking open a dictionary and exploring
> what the diacritical marks in the pronunciation
> guide mean :)
With a nine year old? ;-)
Unfortunately Duncan's not quite there yet.
You do have a point though.
Posted by Rich Burridge on October 31, 2007 at 09:53 AM PDT #
I have a little girl that just turned 6. We do this kind of thing all of the time. Wikipedia is great for finding out all sorts of fun facts with pictures.
Google Earth is also very handy. I think she really has a good understanding of our planet and where on this planet some of her favorite notable places are (pyramids, taj mahal, the white house, etc.)
Posted by Maxo on November 02, 2007 at 08:41 AM PDT #
Just to throw your a little cold water on your doner debate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%B6ner_kebab
what about kebabs? in the UK its a Don-er kebab and spelled Doner.
So there! You're both right I expect :)
Posted by Karl Lattimer on November 02, 2007 at 08:52 AM PDT #
Thanks Karl. Good point. I'd totally forgotten
about them (probably blocked them from my mind
after having a really bad one in London in 1982,
and never wanting to eat another one).
Posted by Rich Burridge on November 02, 2007 at 09:00 AM PDT #