Kids' magazines

Let's browse through some magazines!

The December 2012 copy of National Geographic: KIDS has 42 interior pages, plus front and back covers (inside and out), for a total of 46 pages.  Of these:

• 16 pages are devoted to advertising (including 2 pages of ads disguised as an article)
• 20 pages are devoted to "factoid"-style articles, games, and reader-contributed material
• 6 pages are devoted to written articles
• 1 page is an interview with a "pop star"
• 3 pages are devoted to administrivia (the cover, the table of contents, etc)

... and the color schemes of the "content" pages and the "ad" pages are extremely similar, to make it as difficult as possible for a kid to tell the difference between ads and content.

Shame on you, National Geographic: KIDS!

The December 2012 copy of KIDS: Discover has 20 pages (they number 1 from the cover page).  Of these:

• 0 pages are devoted to advertising
• 2 pages are devoted to "factoid"-style articles, games, etc
• 2 pages are devoted to administrivia (the cover and back cover)
• 16 pages are devoted to what amounts to a magazine-long series of 2-page spreads that each cover some aspect of Antarctica.

I love you, KIDS: Discover!

I Can't Quit U, Spidey

I know the condition of this photo makes it look like me and Spiderman had a domestic squabble in which I tore his masked face out of all images of us, followed by a reconciliation in which I tried to mend the damage with scotch tape, but in reality this is the result of having an inquisitive 2.75-year-old for whom nothing is out of reach because he climbs on anything... 

... whoa, just like Spiderman.  Let's just make up and pretend the Tobey Maguire movies never happened, okay?

Pirates of the Caribbean : the "Connor Cut"

Connor first saw Pirates of the Caribbean a couple of years ago, but he was really too young for the skeletons and some other scariness.  To solve the problem, we've edited the movie by chopping it into the following bits (hh:mm:ss):

00:00:00-00:30:16

00:35:34-00:50:44

00:51:06-00:58:30

01:01:00-01:25:18

01:29:51-01:50:44

01:51:45-01:54:00

01:55:07-01:56:12

01:56:43-01:58:34

01:59:43-02:02:03

02:02:27-02:15:20

and then reassembling it.  Basically, we get the first half-hour of film, remove the part where the pirates attack the town and chase Elizabeth around the manor, remove the worst excesses of Tortuga, remove the pirate skeletons at work on the ship, and then remove the parts of the final battle where the British soldiers are getting slaughtered (all those cuts between 01:50:00 and 02:00:00).  What remains is an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling adventure (and Flynn's adventures of Robin Hood is another Connor favorite) with great lines and superb acting.  The musical cuts are barely noticeable.

I subscribe to the "Motherlode" blog  via Google Reader, and was interested in "Paying Kids to Be Good".  There was a fair amount of confusion on the comments board about how Lisa Belkin's reward system worked; some immediately understood that it was set up like the Prisoner's Dilemma, while at least one seemed to be under the impression that it went: children misbehave -> parent offers bribe, so that the children would misbehave any time they

wanted a bribe.  So much for the reading comprehension skills of the internet public.

There was also an ongoing debate about reward vs. punishment for dealing with misbehaving children on the comments board; however, you can set up this system so that it's either reward *or* punishment, like so:

Punishment. The child's weekly allowance is $10.  For each day either child misbehaves, they each lose $0.50.  For each day the child misbehaves more than their sibling, they lose an additional $0.50.

Reward.  The child's weekly allowance is $3.  For each day the child misbehaves less than their sibling, they get $0.50.  For each day neither child misbehaves, they each get another $0.50.

The same behavior in a given week leads to the same allowance, and it seems to me that the one the children respond to best is situation-dependent.

Connor went to preschool today as the Witch King of Angmar...

...entirely on his own initiative (he was originally going to be Edward Teach).  Sure, he looks more like a hobbit, but you can imagine how proud we are of him.  :-)

We've been reading pieces of the Lord of the Rings to him, and he likes the Black Riders. This was after two consecutive years of Max, King of the Wild Things. In 2005, he was Sunny Baudelaire (Sarah was Violet and I was Klaus) disguised as Chabo the Wolf Baby. That, I think, was even geekier than the Witch King, but being Lord of the Nazgul was his idea.

Kitty lost & found

Monday evening, we couldn't find Kitty (Connor's lovey) at bedtime, and we realized we hadn't seen Kitty in a while -- we didn't think Kitty had gone to school that morning, and the last time we were sure we'd seen Kitty was Saturday afternoon when we took a walk to the gazebo in the park. Tuesday, while Connor is at school, we look all over the house and can't find Kitty. That afternoon I walk to the gazebo (it had been raining all day) and can't find Kitty. We ask Connor if he's seen Kitty, and he says Calico can hear Kitty crying. Sarah is starting to get upset, and spends Wednesday walking along our path to the park, going to every place we went to over the weekend (Borders, the library, the farmer's market), called Parks & Recreation, and sent a message to the neighborhood e-mail forum. I tell Connor that Kitty has gone to visit Calico for a while. By this afternoon, we're pretty sure we're not going to see Kitty again, but it hasn't really hit Connor yet. And then... we set Connor up watch some Planet Earth, and we leave the room for a couple of minutes, and when Sarah checks in on him, Kitty is sitting in his lap. We ask, "Where did you find Kitty?" "Calico brought him back." "Was he under the couch?" "Yeah, Calico brought him back." Wait a minute, we looked under the couch. "Was he in that box?" "Yeah." Oh, okay, we're not getting a straight answer on this one. We're just happy Kitty's back.

Failures to communicate

Connor and Sarah just had this conversation. This is all we could reconstruct----wish we had a transcript b/c it was far funnier in real life...

Connor: Mommy, help me figure it out.

Sarah: What do want me to help you figure out?

Connor: Help me figure it out!

Sarah: What are you confused about?

Connor: What you were talking about.

Sarah: I'm a little confused, Connor. What would you like me to help you understand? Can you explain to me what you're confused about?

Connor: You just keep talking and talking and I can't hear what you were saying when you are talking.

Sarah: Connor, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Connor: Tell me what it is.

Sarah: What's "it," Connor?

Connor: You keep saying that! You help me figure it out! I don't know what you mean.

Sarah: I don't know what you mean.

Connor: What you were telling me about it. You keep talking and talking and I lost track and you figure it out.