Barbie learns Java

or, Big learns kpl 😉

Well, come on, it was going to happen. Living in this house, with *way* more computers than we have ppl, and given that she’s already designed her first website, coding couldn’t be that far behind, could it? (Guilty educational thought – and it might just give another kick start to the reading.) So when Tim sent me the link today, after I’d done my own programming for the day, we sat down and started with kpl.

Now, please remember, this is not a language I’ve encountered before. I didn’t boot up the environment before she joined me, we worked through it together. We only did two of the suggested examples as in the first tutorial, although we did a number of variations of both of them. And she was thrilled. And how cool is it to be sitting next to your offspring when they code their very first ‘Hello world‘ program? I feel I should say w00t, and possibly track on over to cafepress to see if I can find her a T-shirt 😉 (And if I can’t, I might just make one up 😀 )

But that wasn’t the sum total of our day, oh no. She started the morning by sewing up a purse that was one of her birthday gifts last night, made up of that funky foam stuff? It looks surprisingly good when she’d finished, and she’s carted it round with her pretty much all day. Small had to get in on the act, so I found some foam we’d had kicking about for ages, made holes up the sides and he started sewing up a purse/pouch thing of his own. He lost interest fairly quickly, but not as quickly as I would have expected.

They both watched Look and Read for a while, but then Big decided it was too scary for her. Shame, I wanted to know how they got out of it all 😉 I might just have to download the book from that site. There was copious leappad playing, as present from my sister was also delivered last night, and contained three leappad books. Included the Cat In The Hat – LeapPad Interactive Book, which I was really pleased about, until I realised that it isn’t The Cat in the Hat at all, it’s The Cat In The Hat [2004], aka Mike Myers slaughters Cat in the Hat, nowhere near as interesting if you ask me. Not that you did, but you came here voluntarily to read, so pretty much the same thing.

Why do they do that sort of thing? Who lets them get away with it? The only good thing about it all is that we didn’t have to pay to see it at the cinema, we got in free with National School Films Week or whatever it’s called.

Kids to bed eventually, after Small got his cbeebies computer fix, and had the obligatory reading of his eponymously titled favourite book 😉 Big had The Jolly Christmas Postman, which is also rather excellent. Then Tim and I had our Friday night treat of fish and chips, while watching Stark. Which was OK, but finished at 9.20 and when we went scrolling through sky, we discovered that we’d missed the first twenty minutes of the brand new series of NCIS! aargh…..but it’s repeated on Sunday. All is well. There seem to be a few good programmes on at the moment actually, rather good.

Tim then cleared off to bed, don’t think he’s had an easy week. Think I might go up now as well, as I’ve a hectic weekend ahead, starting with Small’s hearing test at 10.15 in the morning. It’s never stop around here. Oh, and I had a call from Kirsty-the-nursery-nurse this afternoon, and was able to report that he’s discovered speech, so that was nice 🙂