GregHowley.com

There are few things I enjoy as much as I enjoy being a father. I love it when my daughter asks me a good question about something and I can really explain things in a way that she'll understand. I love explaining things to her and watching her little mind work. She's probably already forgotten my lessons on heat expansion and momentum, but if 10% of what I tell her sticks, she'll be in decent shape. She already understands the basics of gravity, syllables, and geography.

After writing up my first movie list, I looked back a ways and happened across an article I wrote in 2008 entitled Raising a Geek, in which I wrote about the ways in which I could educate my Padawan in the ways of science fiction, video games, and technical proficiency. That was two years ago, and so I feel that it's time for an update.

Lia is a smart kid. She starts preschool in about a month, but she already reads at something like a second grade level. I've taken chapter books out from the library to read to her as bedtime stories, but I've found that sometimes she'll read them on her own. I wonder at how much of the story she understands when it's not being read to her, but she often focuses on re-reading the stories that Linda and I have previously read to her aloud - I think that helps.

She's already got a good start in board games. She likes CandyLand, but that game is largely for kids who can't yet read. I picked her up two board games for her birthday this year that I thought would be better than CandyLand, and they're both awesome. Labyrinth is a sliding tile game with a handicap that can allow parents and kids to play together and both be challenged, and AnimaLogic is more of a cooperative puzzle than it is a board game. These are now some of her favorite games.

Another board game that I discovered this year at PAX East has turned out to be perfect for Lia. She doesn't yet understand all the strategies of Castle Panic, but she understands enough to play and to do well.

She's also been playing a good number of video games, probably because she sees Linda and I playing games from time to time. She likes to watch me play certain games - I've let her watch me play The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, Osmos, Beyond Good and Evil HD, two Zelda games, and recently I specifically bought A Boy and His Blob to let her watch me play - I haven't yet played that one without her. She played a bunch of LittleBigPlanet 2 with Linda, and keeps up well. The other game I've been meaning to get her into is MarioKart. Some of the easier tracks could be fun for her. But I'm keeping her away from the Rainbow Road.

Another thing Linda and I got her on her birthday was the Diego Rescue game for the Nintendo Wii, and she's already finished it. It's a very easy game - I don't think it has a fail state - but it's perfect for a kid her age. Lots of collectibles and lots of easy platforming.

Linda also lets Lia play iPad games from time to time. Lia loves Jelly Car, Cut the Rope, and The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, although that last title is more an interactive book than a game. She's also got a Toy Story app, of which I don't know the name.

Lastly, I should mention Lia's first two "game consoles". I put them in quotes because it's hard to know whether I can classify Fisher Price electronics in the same bucket as I'd place a PSP or Nintendo DS. But whereas back in the day we had our Speak and Spells and our 2XLs, today's kids have multitouch screens and flash memory cartridges. Lia has a VReader and an iXL. I should do a mini-review here, because they're each awesome in their own ways.

The VReader is mainly an interactive e-book reader. You can download new stories for about $3 each and store them on a (not included) SD card. The VReader came with credits for about five or six free stories and one book cartridge. The best thing (for me) about the VReader is that I can plug it into my PC and the included software allows me to see what percentages of which stories Lia has been reading and how well she's answered the quiz questions. There are a lot of metrics in place - it's pretty cool.

The iXL is slightly more about games and less about stories. Everything for the iXL is done with internal memory, which is both a plus an a minus. There are no loose cartridges to lose, but once the internal memory is full you can't buy a bigger SD card - you've got to remove stuff to make room for more. The iXL will also hold photos and mp3 songs, so that kids can draw and place stamps on photos while listening to whatever music you want.

This article has gotten increasingly rambling as I've moved along, hasn't it? If you've read this far then I'm actually a bit surprised. I didn't think I was that interesting. You have a good day now.