PMS and poetry: Children's poetry archive****

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS WITH CHILDREN.



Yes, I know this is a kiddie blog. At least it is a blog where kids can click safely on images. So maybe it is not a good idea to have this video here: it contains Violence.

But on the other hand, it is not the kids who are reading this. I hope.

Ok, here is the compromise. Go watch that video -over at Parallel/Alternate before you read further.

This one, on the other hand, you can safely click on now -




I know, there are tons of related cartoons and videos; I have posted more or less the first couple that I found on google, because it is really late, and I have to get started somehow.

And the reason I wanted to grab and hang on to your attention was actually this - I was reading up something about PMS, and came across some theories about the cause of PMS. PMS, or pre-menstrual syndrome, is a name used to refer to a collection of symptoms including and laying stress on, emotional and mental ones, which occur up to two weeks before the menstrual periods and resolve subsequently. As about 80-90% of women in US (and presumably a similar even if lesser proportion worldwide) report some degree of emotional or physical symptoms pre-menstrually, it is actually more in the nature of a norm rather than deviation. About 3-8%, however, experience a more severe form known as PMDD.

The exact cause of PMS is, as yet, unknown. Each female body is subjected to a cyclical ebb and flow of the hormones estrogen and progesterone, but why some should react differently than others is not known, as is the mechanism for many of these changes. We know some correlations, but not enough yet. We will get there, of course, but in the meantime, there are several other theories - and I am talking of theories which are more or less accepted by psychologists and psychiatrists, not the exotic ideas of your neighbourhood eccentric.

"The psychosocial theory hypothesizes that PMDD or PMS is a conscious manifestation of a woman's unconscious conflict about femininity and motherhood. Psychoanalysts proposed that premenstrual physical changes reminded the woman that she was not pregnant and, therefore, was not fulfilling her traditional feminine role. Obviously, proving this theory through scientific evidence is quite difficult.

The cognitive and social learning theory hypothesizes that the onset of menses is an aversive psychological event for women susceptible to PMDD. Moreover, these women might have had negative and extreme thoughts that further reinforce the aversiveness of premenstrual symptoms. They then develop maladaptive coping strategies, such as lability of mood, absence from school or work, and overeating in an attempt to reduce the immediate stress. The immediate reduction of stress acts as a reinforcement, leading to the regular recurrence of symptoms during the premenstrual period.

The sociocultural theory hypothesizes that PMDD is a manifestation of the conflict between the societal expectation of the dual role of women as both productive workers and child-rearing mothers. PMDD is postulated to be a cultural expression of women's discontent with the traditional role of women in the society."

I have quoted from eMedicine, and that is almost like a pure medical text, so first I must clearly state that this is not really meant for laypersons but for medical professionals. Also, all these are valid and useful approaches, both of looking at psychological diagnoses and of treating them. And finally, one line summaries do not do justice to the whole concept which may be wider and more inclusive than this would lead us to believe.

Nevertheless, I found them funny, in a sad kind of way. Here is why -

As far as I can see, all of these link up the symptoms to something that is happening before: an awareness of the impending menstrual period. That is to say that according to psychoanalysts, the woman is aware - at some level if not consciously - that she is not pregnant; the cognitive and social theorists propose that women are troubled by pre-menstrual symptoms, and cope with the wrong strategies, which becomes learned behaviour after repeated reinforcements; and the socio-cultural theory generalizes this even further as discontent with women's role in society at large, but without explaining the cyclicity of it, presumably just because periods remind them of their being female. To really reduce this to basics, all are implying that a woman knows she is going to get periods, and so she becomes moody, for whatever underlying cause (lets not discuss that at this time).

Obviously all women know they are going to have periods - more or less regularly, but does any woman constantly live with awareness inside? An average woman, not the one who is really looking for conception, or looking to avoid it - but an average woman does not count the number of days left till the next one, does not think about it all the time, does not, in fact, have it on her mind. It happens, you live, what is there to think about? Yet these theorists claim that we all are counting down in our secret hearts all the time. Isn't that slightly ridiculous to assume? Further, pregnancy is always a possibility in a sexually active female, and is not discounted till the periods occur - so why should a woman get upset at not being pregnant in the pre-menstrual time? On the contrary, it should be the onset of periods which should induce depression or anxiety or whatever.

Not meaning any disrespect to psychologists, isn't this way too generalized, far too vague, and rather - conveniently trivialized thinking - to explain everything so? Oh, I grant there is likely an element of truth in them, much the same as in vino veritas. But just as you wouldn't ply wine to get a confession in the court of law, you shouldn't just define PMS so. It disturbs me faintly, this so easy clubbing of PMS into such cliched reasons...

And now, to business.

Over at the Papertigers blog today, I was introduced to this poem by Spike Milligan -

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all so BOO!
There's a Nong Nang ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mouse go Clang
What a noise place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!



How can anyone not be moved by this little poem? Call it nonsense verse if you will, but poetry for children does start off with nursery rhymes and limericks and nonsense rhythms before it becomes real, before -

...From their gross Matter she abstracts the forms,
And draws a kind of Quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
This doth She when from things particular
She doth abstract the Universal kinds....

So today's featured site is all about poetry - the Children's Poetry Archive.

This cute looking site is based on the premise that it is better to listen to poetry than to simply read it by yourself. Accordingly it features audio files, usually read by the poets themselves. There is some information about each poet as well. Necessarily only those poems are available for which there is an audio file available, but even that is a good enough introduction to poetry for children. Also necessarily, the older poets are not represented, but on the other hand, the new ones, the ones still living, whom even we might not know of, are.

The site also sells audio cd books of poems if you wish to buy more :

The url - http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do

P.S. Incredible stuff you sometimes come across. Viz -



That is an umbrella skirt: a skirt made from an umbrella. Do you really want to wear something so uncomfortable - with spikes and shafts? Looks good, but why not a simple umbrella skirt: you know, the cut? Do follow the link to see the more uncomfortable versions!



Or this, people are paying up for this, in auctions, no less. Limited edition and what not. Piece of wood with a hook - if its done by you and me, it would be dismissed as jugaad, but if it is designer, wow, watch out! And that - seriously - is that a designer baniain, a highbrow version of the humble ganji or what? Isn't this some kind of a joke he is having on us?

(If you look around at his website, you might like the drum disguised as a seat - don't we all know of trunks covered to make diwans, of tins made into stools? Necessity it seems, is not as glamorous as political correctness.)

P.P.S. Indian boyhood by Spike Milligan (he was born in India) -

What happened to the boy I was?
Why did he run away?
And leave me old and thinking, like
There'd been no yesterday?
What happened then?
Was I that boy?
Who laughed and swam in the bund
Is there no going back?
No recompense?
Is there nothing?
No refund?

Lost ideas and Cartoonito***

Today as I was trying to remember the extraordinarily brilliant idea for this post I had last night, I was reminded an old wish of mine, for a book in which one could get all answers. All of us, have at one stage or another, for one reason or the other, wished for a guidebook to life, a companion handbook, a phrase book or a dictionary, a template - something to help us through life when things get in a bit of a muddle. How much comforting to have a map to tell us the right way! A how-to guide to assembling your life! In 1856, Houlston and sons published a book entitled "Enquire within upon everything", which proved to be such a success that 113 editions were published by 1923. (Source - wikipedia, and some googling for old books). How could it not be, with such a foreword by the editor Robert Kemp Philps as this -

"Whether you wish to model a flower in wax;
to study the rules of etiquette;
to serve a relish for breakfast or supper;
to plan a dinner for a large party or a small one;
to cure a heache;
to make a will;
to get married;
to bury a relative;
whatever you may wish to do, make or to enjoy, provideed your desire has relation to the necessities of domestic life, I hope you will not fail to 'enquire within.'

Ever since I read about this book in one of Miss Marple's dialogues (the book referred to as belonging to her mother), I have been fascinated by it. Not perhaps the real book, which I expect would be of little use to me in our world, but the idea of the book, the title of it. Imagine a book where you could get to know everything you ever needed to, or wanted to! All books in the world are but components of this GREAT book, THE BOOK, in fact, which would hold all the information that was ever there... And you could just open it, and ask, and the answer would be there... So romantic, this notion, so beguiling! I wished it were possible, that I could have a whole library at my fingertips, always... Of course, the lure was in the books, not just in the information, but still!

The only other book from fiction, which has interested me so much, has been the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy, with the words 'DON'T PANIC' written on it, in big capital letters. Whether or not the guide contained useful information became irrelevant in face of the comforting preface such as this! With the net at my fingertips, at least my wish for an 'everything' book has been granted in a fashion. Now if only someone would make me a book which will comfort me when I can't remember post ideas!

Cartoonito is a pre-school dedicated tv channel developed by Cartoon Network for the UK. They claim to have 'followed the example of the learning through play framework to create free, fun and educational games for your child. The Early Years Foundation Stage is set up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS) and used in nurseries and play groups. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is made up of six areas of Learning and Development...' These are -

'1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development
2. Communication, Language and Literacy
3. Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
4. Knowledge and Understanding of the World
5. Physical Development
6. Creative Development '

I will not take up issue regarding how Scooby-Doo the pup can teach problem solving skills or increase understanding of the world - but I will say that some of the programs are promising, and presumably, useful. At any rate, I would prefer to have a milder version of Scooby Doo than the full blown (and to my mind silly) one on Cartoon Network! However, our focus at home, and here on this blog, is different. Let us explore the site for some online fun for the little ones.



The presentation is cute, which I am a sucker for! See those shapes - they each have names and personalities, and I am told they introduce the shows on the channel. Not having a tv at our home, we have no connect with them save their presence on this page, and the links they lead to. Bobble, for instance, will list the games -



The Adventure valley from Land before time is a well designed game which actually consists of five separate ones - click on each of the characters in the main menu to make a choice. Starting anticlockwise, these are Sharptooth sneak, Cavern slide, Boulder bash, Rock hop, and Running Wild. All games have three levels, with a gentle no fuss easing of one into another. Cavern slide is about side to side mouse movement, as is Running wild, the difference being the context. Boulder bash needs single clicks of the mouse on moving targets (note that unlike most games, the pointer will not change into a hand to indicate area to be clicked), and Rock hop requires varying amounts of click and hold to allow Littlefoot the dino to cross a broken bridge. Sharptooth sneak is the most innovative one, featuring Petrie hiding from a giant dino in a rock cavern. Click and hold the mouse to move him from column to column, so that he continues to avoid the vigilance of Redclaw. If you release the mouse while he is moving, he will scamper back to the previous column. There is no scurrying back if he has reached the next though. When spotted, Redclaw will only roar, but that roar brings little hands to ears!



Krypto the dog features in a X-ray fetch game involving finding hidden objects in a museum within a limited time, using his special ah, faculties. It was a promising idea, had there been some kind of correlation between the shape required and the shape hiding it - something to challenge a little mind. Think of the art pieces that could have been included, the mini lessons given! Instead, there is no need even to look at the shapes required. All you have to do is to go on clicking at everything that can be clicked, and the 'finds' will be collected for you. Disappointing.



The painting games are lovely, allowing for full screen and printing, and with the reset option though not 'undo', with the cutest proviso of splattering the background with colours by banging on the keyboard. Can you imagine how much fun that is? Sometimes the foreground hardly gets coloured! A little drawback, at least on our machine, seems to be that the splatter doesn't work in full screen mode. Also a pity that each image is labeled as a separate game whereas in reality it is the same game with different images.

Sam the firefighter features in a couple of games in which Norman is in trouble, like lighting a fire or landing in a tree, from which Sam and Dilys rescue them. The format is of a storybook, with words highlighted as they are read but both the speed of reading and the words used are not suitable for pre-schoolers. The story ends with a question regarding the means of rescue: ladder vs rope, hose vs bucket, followed by gentle moralizing. Rather damp; it wasn't requested ever again at our place, but may be useful for the very tiny ones. The full screen option with simple graphics, and the choice of turning sound off so you can read yourself, is helpful there.



The counting game is useful for small children too. The graphics are neat, there is sound and animation when you hover on the animals, and the pace easy. A good one! I would love to see more along this line, perhaps including word building as well. There are also a few other games - memory games, body matching games and one jigsaw.



Clicking on the activities link will lead you to a short selection of nursery rhyme videos, some colouring sheets, and some other activities like dot to dot and differences. There are also four masks to print out. Create a picture will insert your uploaded picture in a frame incorporating the cartoonitos. Nothing elaborate but sufficient.

The videos are more numerous, but short, too short in duration! There are karaoke ones too, if you have a budding genius :) The french section I gave a miss altogether, being wholly unacquainted with that language, so would love to hear your take if you go through it.

There are ads of course, but only related to the channel itself. All in all, worth a bookmark for occasional play. The urls -

Cartoonito - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk
Games - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/games
Adventure valley - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/games/landbeforetime/index.html
Easter painting - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/games/painting-game-easter
Animal counting game - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/games/how-many

P.S. If you are interested, here is the link for downloading the guidelines suggested by the channel for skills which are a must before starting school - http://www.cartoonito.co.uk/store/downloads/pdf/hi-5_curricumum.pdf

P.P.S. You can read the 89th edition, circa 1894, of 'Enquire within upon Everything' on Gutenberg, or the 1865 one in Google, and doubtless a few more here and there. If you have a little time, do go and check it out, for a few smiles, a few useful tips, and for homage to the people who have made our life as easy as it is now with the net!

P.P.P.S. When you are quite finished reading, do check this last page out! If you google, you'll find many versions of this, but the first look is always the best one! Doesn't it remind you of the restaurant at the end of the universe?

An award neglected. A Sprout** and some.

This one is for Rhymes and More, in lieu of the award she so generously awarded me, and which I find myself unable to pass on, because -

Just because.

Just one word to cover too many. Internet connection down. Phone company strikes. Maids who don't come on time. Cooks who leave. Summer which is too hot. Child who falls sick often and then some. Simple words like papa ill. Difficult words like cancer of the brain; emergency surgery; radiotherapy and chemotherapy; a median life span of 14 months after full treatment. And then, school restarting, homework and projects.

In the middle of everything, there hasn't been any time for myself. Occasionally reading up my favourites, but writing? When no one ever reads me anyway? What difference does it make?

But. Someone somewhere thought this worth reading. Someone liked this enough to pass on an award, to let others know - and that is what I write for, after all, for letting others know. Unlike the other kiddie blogs I read, mine is not current: this is no voyage of discovery I am charting in real time. This is a treasure chest I want to share, stuff I have found and saved, for what else can I do with it? So, thanks R&M, for bringing me back to life.

So, in keeping up with that mood, here is today's game all about restoration of life, about germination and propagation - Sprout. Created by Jeff Nusz, a flash and web programmer, this is a pretty simple game calling for some persistence, some logic and knowledge, and some intuition. It is not really a kiddie game, designed or featured on a kid website, but nowadays it is 'in' at our house, so I have no choice but to include it here :)



The game features a single bean shaped seed which has to travel from an island on the sea to an oak grove, across varying landscapes including hills, a village, a desert and a mountain. How does it travel? Simple. It converses with various other plants it meets on the way, and imbibes their character, magically transforming into a coconut, a dandelion or an apple (and others), as per the need of the hour. Your task is to choose the right plant or tree for the seed to sprout into, so as to get it to its destination.



Those of you who are familiar with the world of gaming will no doubt find the technique rather old, but to me, so far only surviving on the kind of kiddie games meant for pre-schoolers, it was almost a revelation. The landscapes are beautiful, pastel or crayon like, the animation simple and elegant, the music and background score very appropriate and soothing, and the idea great fun! My only complaint is that it is too short, and perhaps a little short of educational content - which is unfair considering that it wasn't meant to teach! But I still used it to convey the differences in plants, shrubs, vines and trees, and to talk of the various ways of propagating seeds :)

Jeff Nusz has a website called Custom-logic, which led me to the following cool links as well - all designed by him -

Cloth simulation: a piece of cloth, whose size and other parameters you can change, billows in the wind. You can anchor its points if you wish, and it behaves pretty realistically. A very simple illustration actually - not a game, but I am thinking it shall come in fairly handy in physics lessons sometime in the future. And it took up some minutes to explore anyway, which is all I needed to get the dal in :)



Rigid body simulation, complete with gravity and bounce and damping - another useful little tool or distraction.



And the Kaleidoscopic reef, in which you get the chance to rebuild a destroyed reef from scratch, with the help of some eco-savvy fishes of course. This game, however colourful, was still too difficult for a pre-schooler, and I have not the patience to sit and play all levels, just in order to demonstrate how it works... So, reluctanctly I have shelved it, and not explored further regarding its possible usage in an ecology lessson about pollution and oil spills and the like.



There are also other games listed, of which I found the Webworm game promising, but I couldn't find the actual link either at the website or the site of New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, whose campaign to combat the GypsyMoth this had been a part of. The others are not suitable for the very young, or even the young ones but teens no doubt will like to fight zombies and explore imaginary wonder lands with Anika.

Be warned that although the links I have given for individual games are ok for kids, the sites themselves are not designed to be kid friendly and parental supervision is required at all times to prevent the wrong ads or links from being clicked.

The urls -

Sprout - http://casualgameplay.com/cgdc2/?puzzleID=8
Custom-logic - http://www.custom-logic.com/
Cloth simulation - http://www.custom-logic.com/exp/cloth/cloth.html
Rigid body simulation - http://www.custom-logic.com/exp/rigidbody/rigidbody.html
Kaleidoscopic reef - http://www.kaleidoscopereef.com

P.S. Here is a little poem I liked from Nathalie, at 'Word of the day!' She posts a new word each day, and with it, a little rhyme or some phrase or sentence to illustrate its meaning. Such a lovely way to meet new words. (It could be argued of course that I am just footling, reading blogs, but it is still fun!)

Twitter faces, Twitter faces
Why do you footle so?
My prose can’t be that fascinating
Why can’t you just let go?

Should I declare myself charmed
By the attention, the following
When I truly suspect other motives
Behind your cloned proffered fascination?

Twitter faces, Twitter faces
Why do you footle so?
My prose can’t be that fascinating
Why can’t you just let go?

I think I’d better let you know:
While I am sure you could be human
Maybe, perhaps, and not really a spambot
Don’t ever expect me to follow.

Twitter faces, Twitter faces
Why do you footle so?
My prose can’t be that fascinating
Why can’t you just let go?

And now, adios! See you soon I hope.

Only zefrank**

There are so many words hanging from their idea pegs, awaiting their turn, that I can't possibly do justice to them today. Or tomorrow, or the weeks to come, unless I devote myself full time to this job, forgoing some silly stuff like eating or sleeping (the rest, alas, is essential). So I am jumping straightaway into deeper waters: here is zefrank.com as promised last.



I agree that this index page is rather unattractive for kids, who will surely not appreciate the humour in the labeling of extra spaces on the page, but bear with me. There must be a hundred links here! Skip the 'Buy things', 'Recent projects', 'Stuff, stuff' - none of these are likely to be useful for children. 'Stuff to read', 'stuff to watch' and 'other stuff' can be stuffed too; I at least found them too tedious to explore further after a couple of links proved useless for my purpose. From the section interactive toys, I am posting the descriptions for all games, and including links so you may bookmark individual games if you wish. Be warned that the names on the links can sometimes be pretty obscure. Most of the links, when clicked, will open in a separate window or tab. Some are totally ad free, others are crowded with them, so you have to be around when your kid is here. . .




Meditation flowers are er, flowers which will grow as you sing, or whistle or just blow into your mike. Even if you do stop, it will keep on moving and changing shape on its own. Admittedly its not really a flower, but well, it is so much fun! If your toddler doesn't like it, you might find yourself staring and humming when really you are just there to write that report...

The frog works on the same principle of sound evoking action. In this case it is a frog which mouths the words you speak :)

String spin we have already talked about. Carol maker is where you can make la-la-la music, voice supplied. You can add notes (high, low or double - don't know what it is called musically but I mean when two people sing at the same time in different registers), and change their timings, to make a little 'carol'. Something like the animal sounds concert over at Cbeebies. Or you can choose from a preset, and then send as an e-card to a friend. They get to see a pic of elves in a chorus hopping up and singing...



Flake maker asks you to click and drag anywhere in the given circle - and then, it will automatically generate a six sided symmetrical snowflake from that. You can make it rotate in two or three dimensions, and keep on adding more if you so wish. Nifty, but not the best of this site.

Scribbler also has been covered earlier. The next one - 5 sec doodle defeats me utterly. For one, it opens in the same page and I keep closing that tab instead of pressing the back button when I am done. And another, although it claims it will morph my 5 second doodle to the last one(s), nothing seems to happen. Maybe because it is a first doodle and there are no past doodles? But it doesn't have any option to let me make more. So it must be the net, that convenient post to hang blames on :)



The rather strangely named dtoyvsbyokal is 'The drawtoy vs. byokal'. Draw, and you shall see. That little grey triangle - see that? It will turn your image, no matter how doodley or how refined, into a kaleidoscope. No more, no less. In fact there are two other gadgets here called drawtoy and kaleidoscope, which should explain the name. I think.

Your mama is one which I didn't quite like. The idea seems alright - change the facial features, and when you click play, it will animate them in the order in which you clicked them. But, somehow, it wasn't as enjoyable as it might be. Plus, it is a little confusing at first. (I think I am also prejudiced because of its name - had it been 'make a funny face', perhaps it would have been acceptable?)



The puppet dances to the music playing, and you can adjust 'appearance, sensitivity, gravity and damping'. This hasn't been subjected to the child test yet, so I don't know for sure if these technical sounding controls will be fun or not. What I can predict is that sooner or later mine will find out that the puppet falls down if you fiddle with the gravity in the right direction, and then that will become the goal of the game!



Flowers is a nice little game where you can take your kids after you have been teaching them the parts of a flower, or types of petals, or - whatever! There are a few petal shapes, lots of colours, choice of number of petals and the opacity of paint, and voila, you just have to click and drag once to get a perfect flower with as many petals as you specified. Remember that the flower is always central, so if you wish to make other things, adjust the slider to draw one petal rather than many. You can save your creation, or email it.



The next is snm#1 or craymachine. A little orange square. Type in low case letters, and you'll get shapes on the screen accompanied by various musical sounds. Perfect for infants who just want to bang on the keyboard! Or anyone really. I loved the falling drops - letter l, I think.



Sequencer, simple though it may appear to be, is beyond tone deaf me. Click on notes to arrange them - and wait to hear - your melody, or cacophony. You can save it for public pleasure, if you so wish, or load from what the rest of the world has created...



Gyro will draw mesmerizing spirals from a set of given shapes, for which you can change a variety of er, parameters like rotational stability, chaotic movement, alpha, or horizontal bias. Never mind the technical language - isn't it fun to twiddle knobs just to see what happens? Indulge that wish here!



Bug is. A bug. With four pair of legs, or is that five? Anyway, the point is that they all point in the same direction, viz your cursor. So the little ones can enjoy that, and getting the legs all in a knot when you are directly over it :)



For shelda's mom is a kaleidoscope with a choice of eight shapes, from which the kaleidoscopic pattern is made by, and your mouse movement changes the resultant design... Build yer own is a kaleidoscope too, with a little visual explanation of how it works. An early design I think.



Matrix is just that - a matrix of tiles arranged in different patterns revealed by rolling over the image. If you click, it will show the maths behind the pattern. Rather useful for someone interested in studying patterns, or teaching them, I imagine. It made me a bit dizzy though, and I yet have to subject it to the kid test :)



Oranges - witness the growing of a vine with 'oranges' of different hue at the click of your mouse. Cute, but of course, utterly useless. Or perhaps cute because of that? Quotes animates famous words, or your words, in random order and no particular reason. Too fast for me to read even one full sentence though.

What we want is not for kids: a rapidly changing mosaic of facial features and singles ads.

Googly - you know those image elements which seem to snap back as if on an elastic thread when you pull (click and drag)? That is what it is. Could be interesting for toddlers and infants, but I think it'd hold a pre-schooler for all of five seconds maybe.

Babypics does not have baby pictures, period. It is an animation in the form of three cylinders with the same funny face animated image on each - and you roll over each to make it 'spin'. Not very funny, really. Letters 1.2 is related to the 'letter project' - since 2001 Apr, this guy has been collecting photos of people holding a letter (the first letter of their last name if you really want to know). You type a phrase, and then watch the computer cycle through those images, using the corresponding letters for your words. Punctuation seems to be understandably rare: I have not met anyone yet whose name starts with a comma or an exclamation point! Still, quite a project, don't you think? Webnoise is - be warned - noisy! In effect, background music and a collection of clicking points which add further sound effects. Neither melodious nor particularly attractive.

Kal 2 is yet another kaleidoscope. Choose from 18 thumbnails and it will make a kaleidoscope of that image. Gets slightly spooky when eyes and ears appear: not sure if all kids will take to it.

From the rest, I have not checked out each and every link, and have forgotten some that I had checked, but the following are the ones I thought suitable for our purpose -

Animal noises - very short videos of man making animal noises. First time I ever heard a giraffe noise, by the way. And, yes, the sound of the horse's rear end is gross, and so of course, will be popular with 4 year olds! If you want to see some cat videos, check My cat Annie. You might like to use the santas request line if your kids forgot to write to Santa in time :)

Remember the dtoyvskal above? Well, drawtoy is the drawing component all by itself. Worth a few minutes at least! You can save your image, and view others in the gallery too.

Memory game is the usual but there are short animations instead of images. Definitely worth trying! Also for those so inclined are the digital version of matchsticks - you do remember them from childhood, don't you? Remove or replace a few sticks to change the figure? You have to know the solution: this program doesn't give you extra chances!

Overall, its a nice site with lots of little toys, but - totally kid unfriendly. If only it were set up in a Poisson rouge kind of setting, what fun it could be! In fact, it is perhaps owing to the tedium of having to sit and sort that the rating is a star less than what its individual games deserve!

The url - http://www.zefrank.com

P.S. Hope this extra long post goes a little way in compensating for my prolonged absence? I see that I had started this on 28th of last month...

P.P.S. Don't ask me why, in the middle of the post, when I had selected all text to change its colour, is one sentence in black!

As if the heart needs a reason. String spin***

Today I am going to believe in the power of internet, in six degrees of separation and in the principle of attraction. Will it work? I don't know. The sceptical mind says no, of course not, but I hope, and cross my fingers.

In trying to find the Carl Sandburg quote in the last post, I found a poem which must be the earliest free verse I liked. It came from a now defunct newspaper called Junior Statesman but I don't know when this had appeared - the original cutting, if I had that has long since disappeared, but I had copied it in my notebooks. For years I have wanted to know more about the poet, about the paper, and whether it was possible to access their archives at all. And it just occurred to me that I can, of course, google. But all the same, I want to share it with you, in the hope that something else entirely wonderful may wash up on my shores...

And of course it is a lovely poem. Haven't you felt this way sometime?

As if a heart needed reason

There is a time
When the heart
Seems to sing without reason
(As if a heart needed reason to sing.)

Just because
The tide is coming in,
Or because
Little pebbles
Whisper to each other
When the salt of the sea
Washes them clean...

...Because...
It is morning
Or evening
Or night;
Or a flight of green parakeets
Decorates the festive air,
Backed by a round ball
Of fire.

Because
There is
A rare moment of fulfilment
Against a bottomless ocean
Of desire.

---Anita Mudgal

And, to keep it short and sweet, just a little tidbit, (with hopes of featuring the entire site later, someday). String spin is a 'toy' produced by zefrank.com Its a site I am still exploring and will feature shortly, so more about it later. For now -



Just scribble something - anything, and watch the widget rotate it like a potter's wheel,



making shapes you hadn't dreamt of...



The url - http://www.zefrank.com/string_spinv2/menu.html

P.S. In case you have had the misfortune of already having seen this post, and wondering about why I would have Scribbler as the post topic, and as links, and then post pics of string spin, a thousand apologies! For once I picked up images and links I had stored instead of opening a site afresh and then carrying on, and of course I had to make such a big jumble of it. I have corrected all of it now, and here is the advanced version of it too, in which you can control the colours and the spin variables!



Have fun, till next time!

P.P.S. While talking of lost magazines and papers, wouldn't I love to get my hands on an editorial by Dharamveer Bharati from the hindi magazine Dharmayug, which began (I don't recall the true words now but this is close enough) - Diya kya hai? Ek mutthi bhar dhool! Thode paani se mil kar, thodi aag se guzar kar ghor andhakar to lalkarta hai...

(What is a diya after all? Just a handful of dirt! Mixed with a bit of water, put through a bit of fire, and it is ready to take on deep darkness...)

Be whatever you want to be and Antbee*

Of all the inspiring posts I have been reading lately, barely registering their meaning in the rush between one sleepy blink and another, this is not what I would have chosen to respond to. Of all the wonderful posts by Swistle, some thought provoking, some inspiring, some entertaining, this is not what I would have chosen to write about. Yet, here I am, trying to sort out my thoughts, trying not to make a mess of things by making a short comment which will be - well, a mess.

Basically (if you haven't yet been to read the post after all the links I gave you), Swistle takes exception to the ever optimistic tone of children's tv programs, which promise -

1. You can be anything.
2. You should always be yourself.
3. If you are unsuccessful, unhappy, or unliked, it is because you're not believing in yourself and/or being yourself.

Now, I haven't watched these programs, I don't have as much child rearing experience as Swistle does, and I do not share the same background as her. Yet, I do see what she is getting at; probably you do too if you have read her post (and also at least some of hers before, to get an idea of the kind of person she is). It is an unrealistic and oversimplified picture of the real world; there are disappointments in real life, and it is not always possible to be what you want to be.

But I also, very easily, see the other side of the picture. All of us need inspiration; at the times when all seems dark, it surely helps to know that light is possible, and that it can be within our reach if we try. As new as children are, very early they learn to limit themselves by what they have been told, what they see, what they are taught. So they also have to be told about the endless possibilities in this world. When Nadia dazzled the world with her perfect tens, I was but a child, in a place where there were no gyms, no gymnastics. I still dreamed that I could be like her one day. That I am instead just an overweight sedentary lazy book reader does not in any way take away from the beauty of the dream, nor its possibility. Had I tried to find a teacher, had my dream been less of a daydream to while away time, and more of a burning passion, I could have been at least a fitter person today even if I did not win Olympic golds!

I did have a passion though, something which didn't materialize, and which I ultimately folded and kept away in the attic of the past. Many reasons led to that point in time when I gave up that dream; some were solely my responsibility, others were beyond my control. Does that mean I should not have believed in that dream, shouldn't have followed it to a point where it was all my life? That I should have been told, very early on, that it was not possible for 98% of people to become what I wanted to be? Of course not. Throughout our lives we make choices, choosing at each crossroads the best we can, given our circumstances and level of knowing at that point. Some of mine were wrong, and I could yet have reached the happy isles, if I had known about them - then. But this knowledge, this knowing of self, I have only achieved through traveling the one way road we call life. There is no going back, no backspacing and re-writing. If I were living again, I would likely be making the same mistakes, taking the same road, without the benefit of this retrospective analysis. But, truly, who knows? It may be so, or not. But if I had started out being told, and repeatedly, that the chances of success were low indeed, that would have set me up for failure, and not only that, but for blaming everyone else except myself for so failing. Don't get me wrong - even blaming self is not quite the right attitude: blame is the guilty word here. But, at least, when I have tried and failed, I can take pride in knowing that I did my best, thinking that it was possible. Believing I was setting up to fail, I might not have tried so hard, shrugged the failure away as 'chances were poor anyway', absolved myself, learnt no lessons.

Yes, I am able to see that it is entirely possible to enter an arena knowing your odds, fight against them and win - simply because you care enough to defeat those odds. Or that it is possible, even recommended, to start a business venture with realistic expectations, expecting to fail, to lose money and time, and so win through to the end, to succeed. Yes, it is true of me as well - I can handle the chances and still put in my best. But that is now. Not when I was a child, nor even a young adult. Children need hope, encouragement, endless possibility; they need dreams.

And also, they need reality checks, need to be shown the road ahead, complete with thorns and potholes. That too is our job, as parents and teachers.

But television? It is not really a job for tv programs, (watched by thousands of children, each different from the other), is it? Would you really like your child to be told that it is not possible to be anything you want to be, that it is better to be a hypocrite, that lies serve, after all, better than the truth? There are two parts to it: about being told that you can be anything you want,



...save a komodo dragon, and that it is best to be true to yourself. I am not sure about the first part, but about the latter, I know that some parents would actually like that. The kind of parents who teach their children to bully, to cheat and lie, to bribe and be corrupt - because in their words, 'it is a cut-throat world, so get ahead however you can'. I am afraid I have no empathy with them, none at all. Not as parents, but as people.

But I am afraid I digress. The programs we see on tv are like books we read - we have a choice in the matter regarding what we choose. Unlike books, however, tv is more pervasive and has far fewer choices. I do agree that programming should be responsible, avoid stereotypes, encourage without being overly simplistic. Yet, given a choice between a program which encourages my children to dream of becoming whatever they want to be, and one which cautions to the contrary, I know I would choose the former.

After all, I am there to teach the rest of it.

"Let the truth of Jack and the Beanstalk enter her mind
Equally true with the location of the post office
Because a beanstalk whereon a washerwoman's son
May climb above the clouds,
Is so impossible, it will train her soul
For the great impossibilities..."

Carl Sandburg, in "Prayer for the child Margaret who is six"

And because it has been some time now since we have had stories here, today we have AntBee, a small site owned by AntBee, Inc. of USA. As far as I can make out, the site is still in the process of being 'finished', but I can't be sure how long this has been going one, for I don't think I have seen many changes in the past six months or more since I bookmarked it. Of course, we would have visited it maybe once or twice in this duration, so take my impressions with a grain of salt please!



The site layout is simple with no ads except one tiny one, maybe. The written material occupies only the left part of your screen, roughly as a square. Home is where you are, and more stories is the only other link except for parent's corner.



The stories are in the form of simple illustrations with one or two sentences to accompany each, with no multi-media content or flash animation, which makes it easy for dial ups. The page numbers are listed on the right, which is what you use to move to the next one. There is a 'what do you think' page too, which you can use if you wish.



There are nine stories in all, but they are not all visible on the 'more stories' page. Rather, you will have to click the drop down menu there to find them. As far as stories go, they are ok I think, but then literature is always such a subjective matter that I daren't comment more. Plus, I can never resist a story, no matter what!

The parent's corner has their privacy policy, and contact information, and a some links, of which quite a few are broken. There is also a survey which you could fill and help them in making the site something you'd like.

The url - http://www.antbee.com

P.S. Sour grapes? Or living the real life?

Wow, that is pretty!
It is a purse.
A purse? Really?
Wish I had it! How much is it?
Whoa! Guess, for a work of art that is an ok price, but I sure wish I could make it myself.
*
*
*
Wonder if it is washable though. Those little crinkles will gather dust like anything...

Purses and other everyday art objects made from polymer clay at artist Kathleen Dustin's site.

Tears and Spirographs

.
From Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club' -

"An-Mei," she whispered, "have you seen the little turtle that lives in the pond?" I nodded. This was a pond in our courtyard and I often poled a stick in the still water to make the turtle swim out from underneath the rocks.

"I also knew that turtle when I was a small child," said my mother. "I used to sit by the pond and watch him swimming to the surface, biting the air with his little beak. He is a very old turtle."

I could see that turtle in my mind and I knew my mother was seeing the same one.

"This turtle feeds on our thoughts," said my mother. "I learned this one day, when I was your age, and Popo said I could no longer be a child. She said I could not shout, or sun, or sit on the ground to catch crickets. I could not cry if I was disappointed. I had to be silent and listen to my elders. And if I did not do this, Popo said she would cut off my hair and send me to a place where Buddhist nuns lived.

"That night, after Popo told me this, I sat by the pond, looking into the water. And because I was weak, I began to cry. Then I saw this turtle swimming to the top and his beak was eating my tears as soon as they touched the water. He ate them quickly, five, six, seven tears, then climbed out of the pond, crawled onto a smooth rock and began to speak.

"The turtle said, 'I have eaten your tears, and this is why I know your misery. But I must warn you. If you cry, your life will always be sad.'

"Then the turtle opened his beak and out poured five, six, seven pearly eggs. The eggs broke open and from them emerged seven birds, who immediately began to chatter and sing. I knew from their snow-white bellies and pretty voices that they were magpies, birds of joy. These birds bent their beaks to the pond and began to drink greedily. And when I reached out my hand to capture one, they all rose up, beat their black wings in my face, and flew up into the air, laughing.

"Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.' "

Is that true? Is it true that tears don't wash away our sorrows? What of the days you are so tired, your body speaks in the language of tears without enough reason? And when you have put everything you have in the making of a relationship or a pudding, which still goes sour? Those tears of frustration, and anger, don't they help bring healing? And I remember those grieving tears, for death, for the loss and acceptance of that void. Tears which don't ever fill that empty space but allow you to move on.

But there are tears of hopelessness as well, of impotence in the face of life's vicissitudes, or failure and dejection, of humiliation and rejection. And pain. Pain of third degree burns, of broken bones, of compressed nerves, of cramps which don't stop. Pain of the burnt heart, of broken spirit, of soul squeezed too tight into little jails. What of these? Who do you share these with? And when you do, who amongst the handful of names you have clutched so tightly in your fist will not be a magpie, feasting, feeding, gorging?

But enough of this. Move on now to Spirographs (is that patented, do you know?), those little wheels with holes within wheel with big hole. In the days of yore, when my childhood was long past, but I still roamed free this earth, unencumbered by thoughts of impending extinction akin to the Ankylosauraus, I used to see these with roadside vendors and be tempted to buy them. It seemed like a chidish thing to do, twiddling with colours and circles, so I didn't. Now I think I should have; at least I should like to play again, just fiddle with shapes and colours and the possibilities, and who know what might result? And so, one day, I googled for online spirographs, and here are a few that I saved for you to play too -

Lynn's spirograph is an applet which will allow you to 'use multiple pens and colors at once. If you stop the drawing you can restart it with or without clearing it. You can change the pen colors or select a new disk when the drawing is stopped. Note that when you change disks or click the one (in the disk selection pane) that was being used in the drawing, it will rotate to match the one in the drawing.' Simple and fun, most like what we have seen as children.



The spirograph at Thinks.com has more controls, viz the radii of the two circles and their offset, a complete colour choice, light or dark background, whether a continuous line or not, and what is called revolutions, meaning I suppose the number of revolutions because the line gets thicker when I choose 500... And oh, I almost forgot to tell you that the drawings are more or less instanteous, so the fun is in choosing the numbers :)



David Little's spirograph was the one most liked at our place. It pops out in a new square window, looking more like a game I suppose. But more fun was the finding of new shapes by positioning the smaller circle outside the bigger one. In addition to the control over circle radii and offset, there is also the speed and resolution of rendition, which makes it easy to show the exact path being taken. The page has basic math explanation behind the game, so it is a must read for parents who want to at least know what their kids know...



And over at AFLAX, the java library for Adobe Flash platform, I found this cute little one, attributed to Jim Bumgardner -



The size of the inner disc and its pen hole position is all that you can change, and the thickness of the pen. It keeps moving by itself in rainbow colours, its tail end fading while the leading point moves on...

And finally, there is this spirograph by numbers, which only provides an image after you punch in the required numbers; must for budding mathematicians, but kind of wasted on the young 'uns, and their rushed parents :)

Here are the urls -

Lynn's applet - http://perl.guru.org/lynn/apps/index.html

Spiro online Thinks.com - http://thinks.com/java/spiro/spiro.htm

David Little (maths deptt. Penn State Univ.) - http://www.math.psu.edu/dlittle/java/parametricequations/spirograph/index.html

AFLAX library - http://www.aflax.org/examples/spirograph/spirograph.html

Spirograph by numbers - http://michelle.esfm.ipn.mx/~mrspock/spiro2/

Edit 16th June 2009 - just found another of these flash toys at Chew on glass (http://www.chewonglass.com/games/Wheels) The example below has three wheels, but if you need use only two for the classic spirograph pics. Even if the maths is a bit different, which, being totally sleepy right now, am not even going to figure out :)



Note : Unlike other games, I have not, this time, looked into the backgrounds of each page, so if you wish you may explore further, or not :)

P.S. This post has been nearly a week in the making. For the first few days, unfortunately I alone shall have to take the blame, but for these last three - I am happy to announce a guilty albeit totally unconscious partner: Vivianne Schwarz, author, illustrator and maker of sock monkeys, whose blog has kept me occupied whenever I have had a few moments to spare... Here is a gem I am copying from her 22nd November 2008 post. In entirety. I rather think it may become a chorus line over here, at my blog, where apparently I am doing time lapse bloggography (another little gem I have picked from elsewhere, but more on that some other time. Thanks Pete! And a thousand apologies for calling you Mike earlier.)

La de da doo dum dee da da da... da deee... dum da dooo... da da... don't bother holding the line, try calling back next week... doo doo...

And oh, did I mention we made a sock monkey yesterday?

Eggs over white***

After this long hiatus then, something new we have just found, via the blog of artist/illustrator Julian Hector. Eggs over white, by Meryl Erlanger, another kid book author. (Edit 9th March 2009 - her Eggs over white books, of which I have learnt a bit more since I wrote this, are illustrated by Adam Gordon.)



It is of course, a flash based site, but not too greedy for bandwidth. The long strips you see here will change into a menu when you hover over each section. This is the whole page you see here; no ads and sidebars and other such tiny print.



Choose activities, and you get this. This and all the activities are also full page, and so, more attractive to the little ones. There is a lovely selection of music, which changes with each click through, and I almost didn't want to move on for this reason! The little penguin holding the back placard will help you get back from each page. (Except the journey when it gets all muddled up and will lead to next or just a change in the music sometimes.)



Tic-tac-toe is fun as usual, with a penguin and an egg instead of the usual crosses and naughts. Check out the levels given: I liked the naming of level four!



Drawing with Dobe is standard three sized brushes, and sixteen colours - but - no eraser! And that gets annoying because starting over is not the correct option to offer a child who has just spent half an hour in one 'serious' doodle.



The memory game has no levels, but is fairly easy. The only problem is that the graphics are mostly white or light coloured on white background, and the young kids find it slightly tough to figure out what they are looking at even though the cards don't turn over very fast.

Willard's word search is a game for the older ones - around seven to ten I should say, because the letter grid has small letters in a large number. As the rest of the site seems to be geared towards a younger audience, I think a simpler level with perhaps simple words in the left to right orientation would have been pretty useful. According to the website, the penguins and walruses were inspired and partly drawn by Julian Hector, but whether they are part of a book or a tv series or something else altogether, I don't know at all. The 'webisodes' included are patchy, as if including every third page or so of a book, but don't tell me more. There is something called the journey too, but that too is non-informative unless you know what it is all about. The introduction to the characters is okay, but doesn't really help, unless ditto. So, if you know what I am blabbering about, please do inform me!

My opinion - good as far as it goes, but can be made better. But I sure wonder what it is all about!

The url - http://www.eggsoverwhite.com/

P.S. I don't forward emails and smses usually, unless it is something really fancy, on the grounds that something going round would likely have reached my friends before I send it anyway, but sometimes I am compelled to do so. Here is one sms I received lately which I must share with you -

@@@@@@@@@@@@@
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@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Aise kya dekh rahen hai? Aapke liye garam garam jalebiyan bheji hain! Aaj ka meetha meri taraf se!

(What are you gazing at? I have sent hot jalebis for you! Today's dessert is on me!

P.P.S. Never before have I had to add something about a site so soon after posting it! After I sent a message to the author using their contact form, the site informed me that I could visit more games at Wild and Happy, which it turns out, is the main site for Meryl Erlanger, featuring other characters from her books. Darn, I missed all these! On the other hand, more to showcase some other time!