Skip to main content

Talent

Yesterday was Eleanor's school's carnival, complete with gem mining, a bull ride, ponies, and a talent show. The whole thing was lots of fun, but one of the most fun parts had to do with Eleanor.

She decided quite early on that she would like to do an act in the talent show. After convincing her not to do hula hoop or jump rope (which are not things she's especially interested in, normally) she settled on telling jokes. She loves jokes, tells them all the time, and makes them up. We found some of her favorites from the everything joke book, and typed them up. She got one of her friends to help with the duck joke, my favorite joke of all time.

Her friend played the duck, and they hadn't really had time to practice, but that was the roughest patch. The MC helped out by laughing uproariously, and shouting out responses. (for example: "How do you spell mousetrap with only 3 letters?" "HOW?" "C-A-T.")

I'm proud of her for getting up there and giving it a try. One of her classmates and a stranger both said they enjoyed the jokes. It goes to show that children are not copies of a single parent---I would never have done anything like this. I think that she had a good time, and so did the people listening to her. We'll see what comes next... =0

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A day at the fair

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...

Books I like: magic/science fiction

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy when I was younger, so I was surprised when I was thinking about this list at how few books were on it. The other thing that is interesting is how many books I just remember a few details from, but not anything useful like a title or author. Half Magic and the whole series, by Edward Eager: My favorite is Knight's Castle, although I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I had ever read Ivanhoe... Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald: I'm not sure when it happened, but I now identify with the parents rather than the kids. The Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris: I came back to the Jr. High library to check this out even after I moved on to the high school. Girl with the Silver Eyes by Wilo Davis Roberts: I always wondered what would happen if I had ESP and other "special" abilities. The OZ books, by L. Frank Baum: I read almost all of these (all the ones I could find in the library, rather). My favorite is Tik - To...

Why you should study the history of math

  Why you should study the history of math In the mid 1300s a fad made its way around Italy. Mathematicians would challenge each other to “mathematical duels”. They would post problems for their opponents to solve, sometimes along with their solutions in coded poetry. The winners would get support and funding from rich patrons, the losers would descend into obscurity. One such contest, between Fiore and Tartaglia, involved a new method for solving the cubic. In order to win, Tartaglia worked day and night to find Fiore’s method---unfortunately, Fiore did not do the same and only knew his own method and no others. (*Recall that the formula for solutions to quadratic equations of the form use the quadratic formula, Giorlamo Cardano---physician, philosopher, astrologer and mathematician---convinced Tartaglia to share his method and promised never to reveal it. Then Cardano figured out a more general method, and wanted to share it, but was blocked by his promises. Fortunately (for Ca...