Friday Follies

SIMPLE, SILLY:  This evening we played the game Hedbanz. It's very simple - each player wears a headband, and they have a card stuck in that headband which all of their opponents can see, but they can't. You have a timer, and on each turn, you ask questions that can be answered with "yes," "no," or "could be," like, "Am I a person? A place? A thing?" and so on. With each turn/question you try to hone in on exactly who, what or where you are.  More often than not, hilarity ensues. 

You'd think it would be easy figuring out you're a cheesecake. But it's not.

Or how about flustered Christian? He had figured out he could touch what he was, but couldn't figure out it was the dining room, where he was sitting. Go figure.

I WANT MY MTV:  We finished up week 4 lectures for our History of Rock Part 2 class (via Coursera). Today's talk were about MTV's early years, so Michael and Janet Jackson and Madonna figured largely. 

The professor noted that new wave music was featured prominently on , and 'old' progressive rockers from the pre-MTV days found new fans, like Peter Gabriel. The kids both know his "Sledgehammer" song, but had never seen the music video, which was groundbreaking for its time (and it's still highly entertaining!). 
http://youtu.be/g93mz_eZ5N4


We also watched Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" video. The kids were struck by how much the animation looked like the present-day wildly popular video game Minecraft, and I have to agree with them.  We talked about how the video was in heavy rotation on MTV, and how ironic that was, given it's a song maligning MTV. That said, at least back in the 1980s, MTV played music videos instead of the heavy rotation of reality TV crap it is full of now. 

We took our Week 3 & 4 test today, 30 questions, and each scored 100 percent. Just two weeks to go, we'll be sorry when it's over.

BLUE MEANIES: We've hit a couple of thrift stores this week, and Annabelle spied this gem. ... 

We happily picked it up for a quarter!  It's a reprint of the 1968 edition. The kids treasure it, nonetheless.

DUETS: We've kind of (well, totally) neglected guitar this week, but the kids dusted the instruments off this afternoon and played a number of songs. It's nice to hear them improve and work together to figure things out.