Category: Creative Exercise

Killer Robots Make Math Flashcards More Fun!

carriealexander September 21, 2015 Creative Exercise, Stuff We're Working On No Comments

(if you are not totally satisfied with this product then just go back to LAME-O flash cards.)

My mom was over the other night and I asked her if she would mind going over flash cards with Kalley before dinner. When I came outside to grill our chicken and check on those two, my mom said that her darling granddaughter had put her out in the middle of the yard and instructed her to please pretend to be a Killer Robot.  She was wondering what on earth the child was talking about.

I explained that Jon was way more fun with math (and most things actually) than normal people.  Here is the Killer Robot Math Game that he made up. Here you go. Go play this!! We LOVE IT!

KILLER ROBOT MATH GAME!!!

A killer robot is coming to get you! Disable the robot with your powerful MATH HACKING SKILLZ!

The robot is the slow moving, but also terribly unstoppable, kind. You are stuck (invent a reason: leg trapped, stuck in glue, handcuffed to a chair, whatever) and the robot has spotted you! You cannot escape!  However, you can hack the robot to stop it from advancing on you. With MATHS!

WHAT YOU NEED:

• The hacker sits at one end of the room. The robot stands at the other end. Find a good distance for this. It is nice if the hacker can see the flashcards, but not necessary as the robot will announce the math problem. So maybe 15 yards apart?
• The robot holds the cards.
• The robot announces the math problem on the flashcard and holds the flashcard up facing the hacker. After about a second, the robot ‘turns on’ and begins to slowly advance toward the hacker.
• The hacker must call out the correct answer to disable the robot. An incorrect answer causes the robot to double its speed.
• Once the robot has been disabled, a) it stops moving, b) moves the current card to the bottom of the deck and c) announces and displays the next flashcard.
• Repeat.

The game ends when either:

1. The robot makes it through all of the cards. HACKER WINS! The robot is out of directive combinations and shuts itself down.
2. OR the robot brings robot death to the hacker. HACKER LOSES.

SPECIAL CARDS:

Special cards can vary the level of difficulty of the game and make it more fun. They are shuffled randomly into the deck.

In the most basic version of the game, special cards make the robot move back ten steps. So when the robot gets to the special card in the deck, it simply moves back the ten steps. Then it moves to the next card.

However, if you want to write on the cards or shake up the game, special cards can have a variety of powers. For instance:

1. TURBO BOOST! They could cause the robot to move forward 3 steps.
2. REQUIRED MAINTENANCE! They could make the robot stop moving for 2 cards (giving the hacker more time to solve the next 2 cards).
3. SYSTEM ERROR! Skip the next 3 cards.
4. They could cause some random event that doesn’t affect the game (maniacal scream).

NOTE: This also would work well as a zombie game. Just sayin.

On how some stuff just turns out terrible.

carriealexander August 5, 2015 Creative Exercise, Stuff We're Working On No Comments

We went to Canada this summer on a mission to be more creative as a family. I LOVE wandering in the woods looking for sticks that can be turned into the windowsills, doorways and chimneys of tiny houses.  When I first saw the sloping, moss covered ground on the walkway to the lake, I immediately decided to turn it into a village for chipmunks.

It was a delusion destined for destruction.

I blame it on the mosquitoes. And the fact that the other three people building the houses said I couldn’t use superglue.

We were really into ‘Little House On The Prairie’, and Jon and the girls said that if the Ingalls family didn’t have it, I couldn’t either. We stood in the aisle at Walmart arguing about whether or not Pa used twine and I was like “Oh my gosh people he TOTALLY did! How on earth do you think he kept Pet and Patty from running away back to the Indians?!” And they let me get some.

But even the twine didn’t help.

I spent about 47 hours on this.

Kalley tried to help by carving a door.

And then it looked like this.

This is when we got out the pocket knife and tried to notch the sticks. DID NOT WORK.

I was able to build a bridge.

But I watched the chipmunks for WEEKS after I made it and NONE of them ever used it. Probably because it went to the lame-o twine house that I already showed you.

Jon came up with the idea of just making doorways.

But honestly, if I were a chipmunk trying to find a nice place for my family, this would just hack me off.

So we left our mossy bank pretty much like we found it.

It is said that, in writing, you must kill your darlings. In this case, we abandoned them in the woods and drove off.