Mental Tic Tac Toe

My daughter and son love to do things on the Amazon Alexa.   Recently they’ve figured out how to play television shows on it thanks to a tip I got from my sister-in-law about Hulu connectivity.   We’ve had to take the Alexa Show away at night in preparation for the next morning.  Alexa lives in the kitchen at the bar where they eat breakfast and they’ll start playing something and get distracted, running them late.

The earlier alarm time has been helpful for everyone.   For two days now we’ve had extra time in the morning and the children have asked if they can watch Miles From Tomorrowland before it’s time to go.  Because they’re getting ready on time—early even—so we’ve brought the Alexa back out as a reward for good planning on their part in the morning   My son sits in the chair with his jacket on and his backpack on his back—and he hasn’t put up angry complaints when we need to leave at eight o’clock.   Hopefully this trend will contuse.

Watching shows is relatively new with Alexa because until recently we had an Alexa that was audio only.   During all the time we’ve had Alexa they’ve learned different things they can do.  Games, asking questions, having stories told to them, playing music and even playing games with music.  For a long time, I’d go through the weekly emails from Amazon that listed new things you can do (like having Alexa talk to you like Pikachu) and tell them about them.   But at this point, my children are figuring out new things on their own based on suggestions she’s offering on the screen.

We were in the car the other day and my daughter asked if we could play Tic Tac Toe.   She found out about this from Alexa.   There are so many things you can do that are perfectly suited to a blind child.  But Tic Tac Toe wasn’t one I was expecting.

My daughter has excellent memory, but she also has a way to picture things in her mind and keep track of them in a way that might be more difficult to an adult.   She’s good at mental Tic Tac Toe.   She knows the game will end in a tie if both players play well, but she definitely has the advantage when it comes her opponents making mistakes.

The Big Boy Update:  Mt son asked me in the car today if there was a song called Frere Jacques.  I told him there was and that Nana liked to sing it to him in French.   He was asking a question he knew the answer to though to see if I knew the song too.   We started to sing it together and then he said, “our school song is to this tune.”  And do you know what?  It is.   So we sang some of the original song and then some of his school song as we headed to drop off.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has called me twice now on her ride home from school.   She has a GPS watch we use to keep track of her location as she’s in a taxi and her ride is fairly long.   She can do only a few things with the watch, but calling people is one of them.   The icons are quite hard for her to see and she commonly calls the wrong person so we have only a few people she can call.   The first time she called today was to let me know the dog was in the front yard.   How did she know?  She had just gotten off the phone with dad and he told her so.   The second call was to sing me a song.   It was actually quite beautiful.   She made up the tune and lyrics and at the beginning I thought it was something she’d learned at school until she started saying specific things about me as her mother.   She ended by saying, “and I love you even when you go Pancake Splat.”   The children are loving that name for when I get upset.  So far no pancake splat has happened though.  Thankfully.