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A couple of interesting facts
These are facts I told my daughter when putting her to bed, "Hop in quick and you will get an interesting fact". That way the information becomes the reward.
It is always nice to take something Ellie knows and go in a new direction with it. For example she knows how triangles are used for strength in construction. I have pointed it out in things like girders on cranes and we have used it building kites, then one night I asked her"How many legs does a milking stool hav?" and to my surprise she answered "Three isn't it" "Dead right" She must have remembered illustrations in a nursery rhyme book, she has never seen a cow hand milked. "But do you know why?" I asked in a superior adult sort of way. "Because one dropped off?" she answered cheekily. No, it's because when people wanted to milk a cow they had to do it where the cow was, like in a field or a cobbled dairy or cow shed, always on an uneven surface, if you put a four legged chair down on an uneven surface it always wobbles, a three legged stool always stands firm.
Recently Ellie told me that she didn't really listen to her interesting facts, they were just a pleasant, familiar feeling, I might almost have believed her, except that I clearly remember, as I finished, watching her making the picture in her head and trying out the triangles.
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I had been reading "The art of war in the Middle ages". Do you know what a petard is ? I asked her. "No, you get hoist by it if it is your own don't you?" "that's the thing, and you are not the only one who doesn't know". I had been asking my friends for several days and got all sorts of answers, most based on some sort of rope, a rope for hoisting a signal flag was mentioned several times.
"It's a thing shaped like a big bell, you fill the inside with gunpowder and hold it against a weak place in a wall or against a door, the set the gunpowder off. If you get it right it blows the door down or blows a hole in the wall and you all rush in and take the defenders by surprise, of course if you get it wrong and the door or wall is too strong or you put in too much powder
you are "hoist by your own petard".
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