knex and the terminator

Thanks to Catriona again for this interesting article on autism from yesterday’s Observer magazine – here – goes well with the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical – the screening test is wonderful, pointing out the many unfortunate habits of NTs!

Charlotte much better but still slightly peely-wally (Scots expressions for a bit pale and weak). Started the day with a schools history programme presented by Tony Robinson – kids liked the fact he ended up by saying we won’t need schools in the future! We are now having a construction/engineering day. The objective: to build a terminator! Daniel is quite fascinated with sci-fi stuff just now and watched Terminator 3 a few days ago. We plan to watch the first one this afternoon (horribly violent, cert. 15. but as I’ve rationalised before, still a lower certification than the average school playground these days – at least the good guys win through in Terminator… ) after the creation of our own. Have read up on how ground-breaking elements of it were in film-making even though it was low budget; looked at camera angles and such. Have set no limits on the structures today – lego and k’nex both being employed. They have to be strong and single minded – programmed for something, not necessarily anything involving violence

Remember seeing a K’nex Challenge (they were at Techfest too) taking place for the older children at state school while I worked there. The engineer instructed them to make a tower – after they had all started building towers he berated them that they should have had a purpose for the tower before they started. Engineers build things for a reason – might have been better to tell them that first as they all had to invent purposes to fit their tower. Charlotte was upset that their creations had to be broken up afterwards as they had worked so hard. The younger classes felt a bit left out too. Well today no-one is left out in the cold, they can keep the terminators as long as they like and they know their purpose: Charlotte’s is to destroy the local secondary school… Daniel’s is a destroying machine, programmable as needs be. I’m so proud Tidy-up was made fun by suggesting we time it and work out exactly how long it took – became a mathematical race. Were listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as we work – felt that was suitable music to terminate by… I’ll be back… maybe after lunch or possibly tomorrow!

By evening the creations had grown and spread:

We really are peace loving, gentle people… whatever today’s scrawlings may suggest! In more peaceful mode: a fantastic craft site just sent through email – Kids Domain – the snowglobe and yummy snowflakes in the Christmas section look great!

Little update on below: Back! Watched the film, though children continued building throughout. Catriona informs me it used to have an 18 cert but was changed. Certainly the violence seems to be depicted in a different way from most modern films – difficult to fully describe that, so won’t try. Eighties clothes and hair-dos were scary…

K’nex – the stuff of terminators! Great for manual dexterity, imagination, engineering, construction and fun
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