Sibling expectations

Children can be so strange ...

There was this time when I used to try to force my sister to read the Harry Potter books. I myself hadn't read them, but I had heard a lot about them, so I thought it might do my sis a great deal of good (improve her English, for example) if she read them. However, she never listened, and after some days, I gave up.

I don't remember exactly when, but sometime before the vivas, I just happened to start reading the first book. My sister read the first thirteen pages or so, and since then, hasn't been able to stop reading the books! She's a big Harry Potter fan now, though I admit we are bit late to join the club.

These days, I am trying to get her to learn "LOGO", a very simplistic language with very elementary drawing commands (actually, all it does is draw lines, but you can control their direction, length etc.). She seems reluctant to learn it, however, I am hoping that she'll show more interest with time. After much coaxing, she wrote her first LOGO program today :


reset

fw 90

tl 135
fw 125

repeat 3 [
tl 90
fw 125
]

tl 90
pu
fw 125
pd
tl 135
fw 180
tr 135
pu
fw 130
pd
tr 135
fw 90


This draws a sort of a kite on the screen. Try running it in KTurtle (included in KDE, windoze users might be able to find a logo interpreter somewhere ...). Of course, the diamond doesn't come off well, because my sister couldn't determine the exact lengths needed. Afterwards, I tried to teach her the Pythagoras theorem(of course, I didn't mention Pythagoras ...). Unfortunately, LOGO doesn't seem to have a square root function ... Will have to write one for her now.

If she shows interest, that is. And I hope she does.

PS: If anyone of you has tiny tots around, you might want to introduce them to LOGO. KTurtle is included in the 'kdeedu' package of KDE. Despite the visible efforts, the documentation still falls short. Children whose native language isn't English might find it difficult to understand.