Little Adventures

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Pete's Tasks

Some more tasks that were included in Pete’s office hours over the years:

  Do a sheet of 100 math problems. I had written a little computer program that churned these out. He hated it, and they were a pain for me to check.

   Use Mouse Math or some other kid math software. For older kids, Spiro Math program is more of a challenge.

   Draw five faces, a cow, a picture from a comic book, a copy of a picture in an art book, a deer in three different positions.

   Draw a scene from the chapter book you are reading.

   Do the next lesson in the Draw Squad book.

   Look at the French Impressionists book and find the picture you like best. Write down the page it is on and why you like it. Use full sentences. 50 words at least.

   Look up kangaroo in the encyclopedia. Where and for how long do they live  - 30 words.

   Go to the library and check out a book about birds.  

  Read your book. The day always started with this for Pete. He could pick what he wanted to read, but it had to be a chapter book. I would either read the book or scan it so that I could quiz him on content at review sessions.

   Do Mario Teaches Typing for 20 minutes. Used the first year - he hated this.

   Do Mavis Beacon typing for 20 minutes. He hated this, too, but man-oh-man can that kid type today. I think these loathsome drill programs were probably responsible. He and I use to have typing races sometimes, and I had to practice to make any kind of a showing. By the second summer he could beat me hands down, but after 40 years of hunt & peck, this experience finally taught me how to touch type.

   Make a Dacta model. Lego Dacta is a fancy add-on for Legos that includes gears, motors and pneumatic fittings. It comes with a bunch of project cards, some of which are quite challenging. Pete loved doing these. I am sorry that Lego Mindstorm and Arduino were not available back when we were doing office hours. Both he and I would have had a lot of fun with them.

   Make a tetrahedron model using SymmeToy.

   Write an outline for your own Star Wars episode. Write the first page of the story.

   Write instructions for getting up in the morning or some other simple task.

   Write, write, write..

   Go buy milk and bread at the nearby convenience store.

   Oil the hinges on the bathroom door.

   Do other safe small jobs around the house.

   Take apart a broken computer, clock, turntable to its smallest pieces. (Not a TV… too dangerous.)

   Look at the Magic Trick book and learn a card trick that you can show me. I had about 30 books on things like magic, cryptography, toy making, Boy Scout merit badges, old-time boy’s activities, art, exploration, mysterious places, how things work, op-art and polyhedra. All of these were potential sources of tasks, and Pete often had to root through this home library in search of the proper book.

   Use the Polaroid camera to take 5 nicely composed pictures in the back yard.

   Use my old film camera to take 12 pictures that tell a story. Take the film to the drug store and have it developed.

   Go to Gloss Jewelers and talk to Mr. Gloss about his business. I of course previously made sure that Mr. Gloss would be available and willing to give a tour to a lone ten-year-old.

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  Treasure hunts. These started simple and became quite complex. The one I best remember was The Mystery of the Four Fins. Pete did it with his cousin JP, who was visiting for the week. It went something like this:

Clue 1:  Something is wrong with our lawnmower. This took the boys out to visit the lawnmower in the garage. Tied to the blade was...

Clue 2: Hmm, pretty dull. Better look at a new one at Shirey's.  This took them to Shirey's Hardware - the folks there were in on the game. Tied to a new blade was...

Clue 3: A message written in Klingon. This took them home to the Internet, where they found the Klingon alphabet and deciphered the clue to read...

Clue 4: Where the Hufnagels are buried. This took them to the cemetery, where in a film canister hidden in the grass at one corner of the stone they found...

Clue 5: 747.54 P13m4 page 115. This was tough, but eventually by asking a couple of adults, they figured out it was the call number of a book. They hurried up to the public library, where tucked into page 115 of a particular book they found the four fins… four $5 dollar bills.