Mothers of yesteryear entertained their kids with mind games such as these.
At any rate, my mother did. Also, she played checkers with us, and Chinese checkers. She read to us, and generally filled our heads with good things. She also filled our tummies with good things which she made, baked, preserved and served in her own kitchen. Wood burning stove, too, until I was nine years old. I related earlier how terrified she was to use the pressure canner, and yet that did not deter her from "putting up" hundreds of quarts of good things to eat every summer. Air conditioned kitchen? Phfft. Never heard of it, and couldn't have had it if we had.
Remember these, or enjoy them in any event.
As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats.
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives, how many were going to St. Ives?1
Two legs sat upon three legs,
With one leg in his lap;
In comes four legs
And runs away with one leg;
Up jumps two legs,
Catches up three legs,
Throws it after four legs,
And makes him drop one leg. Image: mothergooseclub.com
What are we?2
Railroad crossing, look out for the cars!
Can you spell that without any "r's".3
I have watched some of those three and four year old kids "working" on their computers. They become quite adept at punching the right buttons to get a desired result. I suspect this is excellent training for the world in which they will live circa 2034. Skinner would be proud..
1 one
2 man, stool, leg of lamb, dog
3 t-h-a-t
9 comments:
I am definitely for the old way of having fun and learning. I was at a workshop recently where they detailed how a young child's brain is actually rewired with the overuse of technology.
One - That Too early to think about the other but I know the answer...it's buried somewhere in the back of my brain...
No computers while growing up, but those "stay-at-home" moms were great teachers. Adding the rows and columns on the calendar without using pencil and paper developed a skill that still serves me well. (I must admit that I hated doing that and I hated that my sibling was better at math than was I.)
Shelly, rewiring is exactly what is happening. Just recently at dinner which included four great grandchildren aged four to eleven, as soon as the kids were excused from table, all four were immediately "on their laptops." There is no doubt in my mind that Pavlovian conditoning was occurring.
Grace, I know you know it; don't let it drive you crazy as you go through the recovery process.
As I quoted these riddles in my mind during my "selection process" I recalled a couple of them whose answers eluded me for a while, too.
Vee, the old saw "Mother is the first teacher" is true; but fortunate are those such as you and I whose mother was our best teacher as well.
One, two, three and four legs is new to me. The others are old friends. I shared this a couple of hours ago with my sons. The result has been a [nearly] continuous exchange of e-mails and some interesting twists of the tale. :)
Chuck, I am gratified to know that you are having fun with some of the old-time fun, too.
I got it now, a person,(2 legs) a 3-legged stool, a cooked chicken leg(one leg) and a dog (or something like-4 legs)
Ta Da!
I always got a kick out of the St. Ives one...
I just realized you had posted the answers - were they there before? 'Cause I didn't notice them -
even tho I was up fairly early (like 7) - the brain doesn't kick in until much, much later...
Grace, they were there before, but you had the satisfaction of working it out on your own! Very good.
My brain works on some sort of delay function, so I know what you mean.
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