6 ms·

You are a lucky parent!

by ipnon 3y ago

Dove 3y ago
Thank you! We think so! This kid's scratch page is wild - https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ One of my favorite joint projects with him was a python implementation of Game of Life in which individual cells have velocities, and will crash into and react to each other. He just came up to me yesterday proposing a refinement to the physics. I oughta put that one up on Github. Good times. :)
- bozhark 3y ago
  Maybe you should make more. Kids. Because this is amazing
  - lotharbot 3y ago
    We (I am Dove's husband) have 2 other children. The 7 year old builds electric circuits (takes after his grandpa who worked for NASA and HP before becoming a pastor), and the 2 year old mostly makes engine noises while driving his monster trucks around the living room.
    - Dove 3y ago
      The seven year old can make an electric motor out of spare parts (batteries, magnets, wires), and routinely makes electromechanical Minecraft contraptions that I don't comprehend. We just hope they choose to use their powers for good.
      - Jerrrry 3y ago
        My 7 y.o. can explain a motor but we haven't tried building one, I was eyeing him sets online and was between a few. I built him a loop in MineCraft redstone to power his randomly-timed spooky lights in his "the backrooms" (SCP), but I don't know how to use the newer redstone stuff and haven't found a (educational) use-case to built him anything with the redstone torch/NOT logic gate etc.
        Dove 3y ago
        Mine started with homopolar motors! They're fun and easy and great kid-level physics and engineering. I can also recommend Snap Circuits for Christmas. :)
        nathan_douglas 3y ago
        My thirteen-year-old got tangled up in his dress shirt the other day.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - taway_6PplYu5 3y ago
      Can I say it one more time? Get him building eurorack modules. It's like legos for sound. So many possible combinations! Everything is voltage controlled, so the output of anything can be inputs for anything. And you get to build lots of cool circuits. Designing your own isn't hard, you can get really far with just op-amps and resistor/capacitor circuits. some of the resistors are potometers, of course. So you have some knobs to turn. But it is usually bog-standard chips. op-amp, simple gates, 8-bit buffers.
- Jerrrry 3y ago
  Do you have any resources to best optimize (or at least not squander) a young genius's opportunity, especially in math? My son (just turning 7) is smarter than I am; and possibly more as an artifact of being on the spectrum, is nearly bored after textual representations ( one tredecillion, ten tredecillion...), ~70 digits of pi, latin/greek alphabet, periodic table, planets/cosmos, and every other aspect of rote memorable/science/math things. I'm not sure if he's bored now, or simply too busy with trying to learn to read, or burnt out, but I've tried to look for more collegiate material that may suit him, besides looking ahead 4-5 school years, and come up rather short. Some private tutoring material has seemed most helpful, but so far, YouTube has the best material, but obviously that has its own issues. Besides more moderated Youtube/Kids, i fear im missing something obvious
  - lotharbot 3y ago
    I (as noted in another comment: Dove's husband and the father of the child in question) homeschool him. My wife and I both have graduate math-related degrees. We let him pretty much run wild with independent math research, while also making a point to probe for weaknesses -- last year I gave him the tests from some MIT Opencourseware calculus courses and about twice per year-of-calculus we ran into something he hadn't learned and spent a couple days working it up. On the future agenda is Gilbert Strang's linear algebra course, since there are full lectures online and everything. What we did in past years was, largely, giving him unfettered access to math and math-related channels on youtube. Vi Hart, Numberphile, 3blue1brown, stuff like that. When he showed interest in something specific, we'd get him appropriate materials. Since his elementary school was a public montessori school, his teachers encouraged us to send him with appropriate math workbooks for his capability level.
    - agileAlligator 3y ago
      I envy today's generation and their free access to high quality maths resources haha
      - kevindamm 3y ago

You are a lucky parent!

by ipnon 3y ago

You are a lucky parent!

Dove 3y ago

Thank you! We think so! This kid's scratch page is wild - https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ One of my favorite joint projects with him was a python implementation of Game of Life in which individual cells have velocities, and will crash into and react to each other. He just came up to me yesterday proposing a refinement to the physics. I oughta put that one up on Github. Good times. :)

bozhark 3y ago
Maybe you should make more. Kids. Because this is amazing
- lotharbot 3y ago
  We (I am Dove's husband) have 2 other children. The 7 year old builds electric circuits (takes after his grandpa who worked for NASA and HP before becoming a pastor), and the 2 year old mostly makes engine noises while driving his monster trucks around the living room.
  - Dove 3y ago
    The seven year old can make an electric motor out of spare parts (batteries, magnets, wires), and routinely makes electromechanical Minecraft contraptions that I don't comprehend. We just hope they choose to use their powers for good.
    - Jerrrry 3y ago
      My 7 y.o. can explain a motor but we haven't tried building one, I was eyeing him sets online and was between a few. I built him a loop in MineCraft redstone to power his randomly-timed spooky lights in his "the backrooms" (SCP), but I don't know how to use the newer redstone stuff and haven't found a (educational) use-case to built him anything with the redstone torch/NOT logic gate etc.
      - Dove 3y ago
        Mine started with homopolar motors! They're fun and easy and great kid-level physics and engineering. I can also recommend Snap Circuits for Christmas. :)
      - nathan_douglas 3y ago
        My thirteen-year-old got tangled up in his dress shirt the other day.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - taway_6PplYu5 3y ago
    Can I say it one more time? Get him building eurorack modules. It's like legos for sound. So many possible combinations! Everything is voltage controlled, so the output of anything can be inputs for anything. And you get to build lots of cool circuits. Designing your own isn't hard, you can get really far with just op-amps and resistor/capacitor circuits. some of the resistors are potometers, of course. So you have some knobs to turn. But it is usually bog-standard chips. op-amp, simple gates, 8-bit buffers.
Jerrrry 3y ago
Do you have any resources to best optimize (or at least not squander) a young genius's opportunity, especially in math? My son (just turning 7) is smarter than I am; and possibly more as an artifact of being on the spectrum, is nearly bored after textual representations ( one tredecillion, ten tredecillion...), ~70 digits of pi, latin/greek alphabet, periodic table, planets/cosmos, and every other aspect of rote memorable/science/math things. I'm not sure if he's bored now, or simply too busy with trying to learn to read, or burnt out, but I've tried to look for more collegiate material that may suit him, besides looking ahead 4-5 school years, and come up rather short. Some private tutoring material has seemed most helpful, but so far, YouTube has the best material, but obviously that has its own issues. Besides more moderated Youtube/Kids, i fear im missing something obvious
- lotharbot 3y ago
  I (as noted in another comment: Dove's husband and the father of the child in question) homeschool him. My wife and I both have graduate math-related degrees. We let him pretty much run wild with independent math research, while also making a point to probe for weaknesses -- last year I gave him the tests from some MIT Opencourseware calculus courses and about twice per year-of-calculus we ran into something he hadn't learned and spent a couple days working it up. On the future agenda is Gilbert Strang's linear algebra course, since there are full lectures online and everything. What we did in past years was, largely, giving him unfettered access to math and math-related channels on youtube. Vi Hart, Numberphile, 3blue1brown, stuff like that. When he showed interest in something specific, we'd get him appropriate materials. Since his elementary school was a public montessori school, his teachers encouraged us to send him with appropriate math workbooks for his capability level.
  - agileAlligator 3y ago
    I envy today's generation and their free access to high quality maths resources haha
    - kevindamm 3y ago