Only Slightly, Slightly Scary Monsters Allowed
arun on Mar 14 2008 | Filed under: 4 to 8 year old
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Some of my fondest memories of my youth was time spent with my family, our next door neighbours and a couple of my brother’s friends as we trawled through swamps, fought a huge array of monsters, raised armies, trapped dragons, fled from trolls and plundered treasure… oh… and we died on numerous occasions.
Of course we did this from the comfort of our families dining room table with lots of chips, juice and toilet breaks to keep us going.
For those unitiated into the way of the nerd – I am talking about my mispent youth of playing the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D as its known to its friends. Actually it has more friends than you might think, with over 20 million people having played it!
I wanted to write this post now in part as a tribute to the creator of D&D, Gary Gygax who died earlier this month. His creative legacy continues and has made a big impact on many.
Actually it in part led me to have children, after all now I have the opportunity to literally grow my own nerds so in a few years I will have in-house D&D partners… I know what you are thinking, ‘it would have been easier to place a classified’ right? wrong! Have you tried to find a nerd that you could cope living with!?!! No, much better to grow them, it takes longer but is definately worth it in the long run.
It’s a slow process and I have been laying the foundations for sometime. M is 6yrs old now but for the last 2 years I have been telling stories about “Annabel’s World”. M & I worked out this world together which includes Annabel the rainbow fairy and her friends such as GoGo the Giant; Ruby the rainbow dragon (what can i say? the girl loves rainbows!); the Grumpy Witch and Fadoogle her pet dog to name but a few.
I tell these stories as interactive “choose your own adventure” sort of things. We recorded a number of these a and even added some music & the odd sound effect.
A favourite of mine is Annabel & the Hungry Monster which was one of several stories recorded when M was 4 years old, it goes for seven minutes and you can listen to it online here. Listenting to it will also explain the title of this post.
Annabel stories were loads of fun, however after several Annabel stories a day over a couple of years… they have started to get harder and harder to tell (M is not usually as forthcoming with the plot as she was in the Hungry Monster example above).
I thought about introducing D&D now, but M is quite a sensitive soul who does not like scary monsters or the like. So after days of web searching I managed to find Faery Tales, which is a younger, toned down role-playing game that can start kids (and adults) along the role playing path.
I’ve already ordered it, yet to read it, let alone play it with a bunch of kids so Im not sure about it yet… but it was encouraging to see that there is a market out there for introducing nerdy games early.
Would love to hear from you other rpg nerds out there. Anyone tried this game or know of other similar ones?
SPLAT!


Let me unequivocally state here and now that consistency is essential, non negotiable and crucial in parenting… if you are going down the behavioural modification road.
(btw – thanks to Scott Stantis for the cartoon).
Jan Hunt director of the Natural Child Project and her unschooled son Jason are coeditors of the soon to be released The Unschooling Unmanual. This compilation of eleven essays will be available in early Feb, 2008.
For mild to medium freak outs, gather favourite articles, quotes and references in this genuine imitation leather folder. For extreme cases we highly recommend buying our “Anxious Unschooler Pack”, which consists of ten folders – one for every room of the house and the car. We highly recommend beginning the folder with a letter to yourself written during your more lucid moments which begins, “I am choosing to unschool because…” (comes with examples). Beautifully adorned with wise, soothing text inspired by the late Douglas Adams.
When you are really losing the plot and about to send the kids to boarding school, its time to purchase our “Emergency Box”. Break the glass and get an emergency copy of
Simply place between brain and mouth via the left nostril (tongs not included) and the Brain Filter will immediately delay your thoughts from reaching your mouth by 4 seconds. Time enough to reconsider those ill advised judgement statements such as the classic, “stop playing bloody world of bloody warcraft, get off that couch and go and learn the god damn periodic table or something, anything!!!”
Perfect for those particularly pesky relatives or friends who are challenged by your decision and continue to strongly advocate the school system. We have successfully cloned John Taylor Gatto, New York Teacher of the year and eloquent critic of schools… we have also dehydrated him (them). When you find yourself in one of “those conversations”, simply pull out your Gattomatic pill, add water and make a hasty get away while the John Taylor Gatto clone takes over.
For those that unschool and yet have to report to some government agency… or the kids grandparents, why not buy our academic translator? simply say the activity that you have been pursuing (eg. blowing bubbles in the garden) and allow the translator to do its magic, in this case the results were: “todays lesson plan consisted of Chemistry, particularly working with the results of the saponification process from sodium and potassium fatty acid salts; Physics, examing surfactants and the Marangoni effect on liquid surface tension. A side experiment of light wave interference patterns from solar sources through viscous air borne fluids was also pursued.”
