Scaring, the children

[drdoug]

The other day, **FIXME tried to convince his mother that she should choose five as her favourite number. Why? Because his favourite number is i, **TODO's favourite number is π, and my favourite number is φThis evening, in the middle of a word game, **TODO had to think of an adjective that could apply to "person" that began with an F. His choice? "

Comments

[vinaigrettegirl]

Excellent news on all fronts. We used to play a car game called 'The minister's cat' which called for alphabetical adjectives, and because we bent the rules a tadge, conjured up some cartoon character cats. The minister's cat is an heretical cat, sometimes, or may be a pious cat. You never know with a cat.

[drdoug]

We play "The vicar's cat" in the car with our kids, which is almost certainly the same one or a close relative. "The vicar's cat is an abandoned cat; her name is Aaliyah and she likes to eat aardvarks." and so on until you reach "The vicar's cat is a zymotic cat; his name is Zymon and he likes to eat zygotes.".

Originally we went straight through the alphabet with one statement per letter, but a more recent variant - which goes on for much longer - is to attempt to collectively exhaust the possibilities for the letter A before moving on to B, and so on.

I sometimes worry it's a terribly Improving sort of game, being so transparently a way of gently expanding their vocabulary, but when they're in to it they love it, and it works wonderfully to stave off boredom without involving a screen.

[vinaigrettegirl]

^^^^ :-))) Yep. That's the one. We used to use the wonderfully weird characters we invented this way in stories to tell, one line per person.