The other day we went to the Zoo with my boys (a five year old and a three year old). In the car, we were talking about which animals the kids would really like to see, and what animals would be there, etc. I was pumped because the kids love animals and showing them an elephant in a book and in real life doesn't compare. In a book, there's no movement, no comparison in size with the surroundings, no texture. My five year old son was especially excited, and he had a million questions for me about the zoo and the animals: "How do the giraffes drink waterwhen they're so tall? Do giraffes have a red tongue or a black one, like daddy says?" etc. Then we got the tickets and a map of the Zoo. So exciting! Jakub, the five year old, couldn't stop looking at the map and planning our trip around the Zoo: "We'll go see the elephants first, and then the Rhinos and then this and then that. I really want to see the eagle and the owl and the kangaroos." I was so happy. We came to the perfect spot. We also got this cool "passport" where the kids could stamp at a station near each animal to show they've been there, seen the particular animal. Also an awesome idea, I thought. Then we started our journey.

What is the purpose of homework? Why do so many kids suffer from homework anxiety? Why do we teachers assign so much homework?

Last year, one of my favorite students' father wrote all the teachers a note through our online communication system. The note went something like this (all in capital letters):

Today I tried a science olympics event in one of my classes.

At the beginning of December, I assigned my grade 8 students to build a machine / model using hydraulics or pneumatics. They are due this week, and some have already come in. So far I am extremely impressed.

You will only get this if you're a major physics geek (To see it bigger, click on the image):

I think I am one of the least "protective" parents in the world. I have a five year old, a two year old and now a two month old. They're all boys, and when they get wound up, they absolutely drive me crazy. But I love them to death, and of course I don't want them to get hurt. But on the other hand I know they have to get hurt to understand the world.(Somebody once told me that you don't really know how to ride a horse until you get thrown off the horse - same sort of idea.)

I really get annoyed at people that seem to think I am jeopardizing my sons' lives in some way and try to "fix" my way of raising MY kids. I remember clearly times when strangers or friends told me or my kids what to do (or more likely what not to do). I feel I have a very good sense of what my children can do, what they are capable of, how far they'll go. If I think my child isn't in danger, I don't think a stranger should interfere.

I got this emailed to me. Some of these patterns were really cool, so I'm posting it. Check out these cool patterns with numbers:

Recently I went to the doctor for my son's yearly check-up. Our doctor is fantastic, and I am so lucky that I was fortunate enough to get him. Everytime we go, I learn something very interesting, this time was no exception.

The Doctor started asking standard medical questions: Was Jakub seriously ill this past year? Any ear infections? etc. Then he turned to his mental, social and physical development. And he asked me:

"Does Jakub know how to draw a person?"

A great activity I recently did with my son was a "life-line":

1. Take some letter sized printer paper and cut it in half (length wise). The child can do the cutting to practice their cutting skills with scissors.

2. Then tape the pieces together lengthwise to create a long strip of paper. We used a total of two pieces of paper (4 strips taped together) for my 5 year old son's life line, and three pieces of paper (6 strips taped together) for my life line (I'm a bit older than 5 so my life line had more going on than my son's).

3. Then, draw a long line down the centre of the long paper strip.

4. Label 0 at one end (to mark your child's birth) and your child's age on the other end (to mark how old he/she is now). Fill in the rest of the number line with all the years that are missing.

5. Then the fun part begins. You get to tell your child when they first talked, first walked. What major events happened in their lives, such as moving, going to preschool, learning to swim etc. For each event draw (or get your child to draw) a little picture to represent the event. My son also asked me to draw birthday cakes to represent each birthday (with the right amount of candles on each cake). He also asked me to remind him when he started to like dinosaurs, which colours he liked at what ages, etc.

We were playing Settlers of Catan the other day. If you don't know it, you should immediately go out and buy it, because it is a fantastic game... one of the best strategy / board games ever. But back to my topic... The game relies on die randomness. From basic math / probability, we know that when rolling two dice, the sum of 7 has the highest probability of getting rolled. Next, the sums of 6 and 8 would have the next best chance. More importantly, the 6 and the 8 would have equal chance of getting rolled. Then 5 and 9 and so on. This is easily shown with a table (sample space) displaying all the possible outcomes of rolling two dice and then counting the number of possible outcomes of getting a sum of 7, sum of 6, sum of 8 etc.