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BurntOutMom
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04 Apr 2011, 11:39 am

Ohhhh Ohhh.. I have a fun idea... Do you have a webcam? With blogspot you can create your kid a blog page and set the parental controls so you have to approve people to view his page...

Perhaps he could start a vblog? That would mean that he has to sit down and figure out what he's going to discuss, and then he gets in some of his verbal needs by sitting in front of the camera and taping his segment. Sure it would work best for you if the computer isn't in a common area, but this could double as an outlet for whatever his special interest is. I've considered this for my son, but his ADHD keeps him from really focusing on the project, perhaps the situation might be similar with yours, but I thought I'd mention it.



huntedman
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04 Apr 2011, 12:24 pm

ominous wrote:
I think he'd be right into engineering robots, hence the Meccano. Mum sucks at following instructions and staying calm as well so we are a pair to be reckoned with. My idea of hell is bringing home a flat pack item from Ikea and watching the little smiling man mock me from the "easy to follow, international" instructions. You don't want to see my $14.95 wine rack with the rock under one dowel that keeps the sixth bottle from sliding out.


Don't get me wrong, I can't stand following instructions either. The instructions often got discarded and it became more a process of trying to jam things together until I understood what fit together, how it relates to the final picture, that this needed to be put on before that etc. One of the reasons i always liked Ikea type furniture, throwing out the instructions, laying everything out on the floor and imagining how the pile of parts turns into the final product. Kind of imagine watching a animated video of the object assembling itself.

I'm still trying to think of a good intermediate building toy. I would place Knex and robotix/capsela (now obsolete/used sets available) in between Lego and meccano, but they are similar and still suffers from being indestructible, so there is no reason not to smack things together.

I know they have a difficulty rating system for models, but I have not bought one in 10-12 years, so i don't remember the range. I would try to avoid parts that are too small, kind of like the nuts that came in the old meccano (although i don't know how the larger size differs) just because they are difficult to hold. Balsa wood kits that build small planes, cars etc are great, yet that might be a bit older. You might want to just visit a hobby store and see if anything hits a special interest.

When you mentioned robotics, I wanted to bring up this:
Snap Circuits - 300
It's the Lego equivalent of building small electrical circuits, great for the young engineer, although you might want to remove any buzzers\speakers.



ominous
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04 Apr 2011, 6:50 pm

Ah stupid and useless! Many things are that in our house, luckily not the bleeding $800 worth of Lego. :roll: I also realised (painfully) that the Lego thing was a collecting thing, not a playing with thing. In other words, let's get that really expensive Troll Fortress and we'll build in once. I will play with it once and now I "have" the Troll Fortress. Now I "need" the police headquarters, the knights castle and also that new Ninjas thing that they just came out with. No, no, no. Not doing that. Let's go back to collecting Indian ornamental boxes or something... 8O

I see this Warhammer you are suggesting lucky. I think he would be very very into that. Will check that out further.

Hunted thanks for the feedback. I love snap circuits. I've shown him snap circuits a few times and he's not interested. I think when we get our next round of grant funding to home educate I will buy them for him anyhow. YOU DO NOT NEED TO LIKE IT, JUST PLAY WITH IT. I will threaten him with never being able to create a robot army to take over the world if he doesn't learn how to make things work with electricity. ;) Failing that, if he doesn't want to play with it, I'LL play with it.



BurntOutMom
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04 Apr 2011, 7:06 pm

ominous wrote:
I will threaten him with never being able to create a robot army to take over the world if he doesn't learn how to make things work with electricity.


LOL.... Your son scares me a little now. :wink:

That's too cute!



ominous
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04 Apr 2011, 7:34 pm

BurntOutMom wrote:
ominous wrote:
I will threaten him with never being able to create a robot army to take over the world if he doesn't learn how to make things work with electricity.


LOL.... Your son scares me a little now. :wink:

That's too cute!


He also wants to biologically engineer a "cellular nanobot" that will enter the body and destroy all terminal illnesses. We believe in balance here at our house. :P Or maybe the fewer people dying of terminal illnesses means the more slaves for the robot army. Hard to say at this point....