just was curious if anyone else has a child who is in love with all things charts/graphs/diagrams/maps? my 5 year old seems totally infatuated with them and I was just wondering if this is unusual?! He has a huge collection on his playroom wall - just to name a few: the fujita scale for tornados, the richter scale for earthquakes, every map under the sun including a railroad map that shows all the railway systems in the US and their paths (his one bedroom wall is covered in an entire floor to ceiling wall map mural that he fell in love with online) , NOAA posters showing cloud diagrams, a weather graph in which he writes the daily weather info....He gets completely excited when we find a new one about something he is interested in...his newest thing is his interest in the Titanic history...he had to find the exact coodinates on a map of where it hit the iceburg and then in a Titanic book he learned about the SOS message being sent out by Morse code so this past week he had me help him go online and find a chart of Morse code which we had to print out and then he spent the afternoon with me "writing" (dots/dashes) messages in Morse code while he deciphered them. Everyone thinks I am nuts allowing him to put all of these advanced items up in his room but he finds them and begs to put them up. Anyone else out there with a child in love with these items and if so, any ideas on other cool sites/spots with fun charts/diagrams??

My DS5 likes to write messages in heiroglyphics and has a periodic table and a chart of the solar system in his room. He often asks to look at the globe. His interest doesn't seem to be as strong as your son's, though!

ETA, when I read the topic of this post I thought, "Ooooo! Test data charts!" I think I'm the one infatuated with charts...

I thought the same thing Cathy!

I say let him pursue his interests. My son was into advanced things at that age, and i wondered about getting him into more typical 5yr old interests so he'd fit in at school. Be careful what you wish for. I see that inquisitiveness slowly being extinguished the longer he is in school.

Yes Belle,
My son loves that sort of thing, especially flags and symbols. Google "Information Visualization"

Smiles,
grinity

DD3 loves her maps. I got the Children's map of the US and the World. But mostly she likes to know where Virginia is (where Pocohantas is from) Florida for Disney, etc. Just joking but she has headed for the globe in the library since she was very young, where is Italy: that is where Camelia was born, where is Japan: that is where Chisato and Fumiko were born. Canada where mommy was born. And now it gets more trying to figure how it all fits together and how places are separate.

We did the Land/Sea Disney thing last week and talked about Bahamas was a another country, Fl was part of the USA. For DD is understanding components of the map. But every night, she stands and looks at it before bedtime asking about a region.

Ren

All kids are different. Mine didn't have this particular obsession, but he had plenty of others that were equally...unique. LOL! His punctuation phase when he was not-quite 2 (I think?) was especially amusing. He even knew things like semicolons and ampersands by name. I know adults who don't know what an ampersand is called, but he'd proudly announce whenever he spotted one!

<shrug> They're all their own little people!

Going with it the way you are is definitely the thing to do. You're not nuts! I love that you have all those things up in his room and that you follow his lead.

I don't have any specific sources for you for more charts--maybe check a school supply store?--but I think keeping your eyes peeled and following your child's lead is the right thing to do.

Keep up the good mom-ing!

What a great passion, Belle. It crosses so many genres that it would be fun to nurture that one. I have trouble with my DS11's obsession with armaments/weapons or the long-ago one with fighter jets. Even my oldest DS's interest in economics is not up my alley (lots of charts and tables though!). You're lucky.

Big infatuation with anything that has to do with planes here. Tons of aerial maps, but thankfully not on the walls(tragically, they are everywhere else though). Walls are covered with pictures of planes and self made maps - but I have given up on his room a long time ago. In the summer I do let him use the hallway wall outside his room, but only for the summer!!!

Thanks so much for the comments, sometimes I feel a bit alone because we don't know anyone else that has a child anything like our DS so I am always wondering am I doing the right thing??? - love the punctuation story!! His newest giggles - he has figured out that there are words that sound the same but are spelled differently (homophones)and he giggles everytime he figures out a new one and he's fascinated with palindromes for some reason...we were driving through the neighborhood the other day and he yelled out, "Mommy look, a palindrome - and he pointed to the house number 4114.
New friends that don't know us or my son very well just kind of look at us like we are really strange when they come to visit and see his room/play room/hallway between the 2...and I was worried that maybe I shouldn't be letting him have free reign with his "obsession". He is very visual and has a severe comfort level with chart systems (really helps his sensory disorder as well) - at one point, at his request, we had chart/graphs everywhere... for how many chores he has done in the week (his newest chart), how many books he read on his own, how many times he went potty by himself with no help (when he was 3-4), the levels of rain in his rain gauge...and he loves seeing the patterns on the charts as they change - which has more, less... I introduced him to the local teacher's store a few weeks ago and you would have thought he was in a toy shop - he had to have every thing he saw...I allowed him to get a multiplication chart and yet another solar system chart (he was excited to find one that had Ceres and Eris on it)...the two weird ones that he wanted to make in the last few weeks just baffled me but I just went along with it..one of his chores he can do is help me load the washing machine and start it...he has been fascinated with learning about the cycles on the machine and how to work the controls to choose the cycles...so he had me help him make a duplicate drawing of the knob controls on the machine and attach an arrow with a metal brad so he could turn the arrow to the right setting he wanted, he then taped this up near his play kitchen area and proceded to play his own devised game using the control panel he made....he did the same thing when we went to the local car wash and he helped with the dial pad system on the wall that allows you to change between washing cycles as you're cleaning the car...he made a duplicate and taped it up in the garage and proceeded to set up his own car wash scenario.
His collections are also starting to take over (glad that he has his own room and he has a play room)...he fell in love with coin collecting when he found out that there were quarters out from each state and we found a huge chidren's coin collecting book at the store so for over a year now it has been a love of his and we have now moved onto coin books for all the coins and he looks forward to going to the monthly coin show we have in town to add to his collection (again, the looks of bewilderment from people as this little 5 year old walks in with his lists of specific years he is looking for)...and now we are onto collections of maps, rocks, and for some strange reason...buttons???!!! I guess I just along for the ride and need to get over my worries about what others will think!!!

OMG! We should get our boys together! The palindromes, the visuals, the collections (we currently have a rock collection, bottlecaps, beads, plastic pellets from pellet rifles...)...

You may not have friends with kids like your IRL, but I swear, our kids would get along fantastically. Your son sounds pretty normal for the kids around here!

Ha - we have been generating an extremely large rock collection for several years. This spring DD3.5 has gone nuts with collecting rocks. And she wants to wrap them as gifts too. She is also quite into maps and globes right now.

Kriston - you'll appreciate this one. As a summer project for DS7, we are going to build a time line and mark up a world map for all the world wonders, technologies, leaders, cities, from Civilization 4. Maybe build a mini reference.

Ooooooh! Love that! I want one. Sounds like a homeschool project for us...

Yeh, Belle,
I'm really sick of that 'Bewilderment Look.' ((shrug))
I guess it goes with the territory.
Grin

I would have never really considered my DS5 a chart child but this weekend he was given a weight watchers food counter by my MIL while she was babysitting him. He loved looking at the dietary fiber, calories and total fat of each food package to determine the points based on the sliding system. He spent the morning at my MIL's house labeling all her food and then when he came home in the afternoon he also did all the food in our house.

I was impressed at his determination as it took nearly 2 hours to label all the food in our house. I think it was also a great lesson learned in healthy and unhealthy foods.

crisc what a great story!! I can just imagine those little brain gears turning with all the food labeling! My DS5 loves the game monopoly - not the child version, but the real one...he is ruthless! He is fascinated with the various costs/rent/fees with the different properties and how much each one costs depending on the number of houses/hotels on them..so I came home the other day from shopping to find him and my husband side by side on their tummys with their feet up in the air furiously writing on a chart tablet...I looked over and laughed to see that my son was one by one, reading off the rent, and the various charges depending on 1, 2, 3, 4 houses...for each property as my husband wrote each item down on his chart paper....then when they finished, my son proceeded to come up with his own set of properties and names and their rent/charges and then he compared how each were more/less (shmuzzy lane cost $1,345,564 if you landed on it when it had a hotel) :-) ...he carried that silly paper around with him all afternoon and kept asking me if I wanted to know a certain charge for a particular property :-) but this is the 2e child who can't seem to score a proper score on an IQ test!

DD4 doesn't care too much about maps yet, but he has always loved road signs. We just got back from a fabulous trip to aruba (lucky me!), where DD4 had to be in control of the map with the quite different road signs on it. He would see the signs and yell out what they meant to the driver.

We also risked paying extra for our luggage, hauling back the giant bag of rocks he collected to add to his other rocks. When I was carrying his booster to the baggage line, a bunch of rocks fell out of the cupholder. I asked him where they came from, and he said "the road - they're gravel rocks." These mysteriously didn't make it home with the rest of the beach rocks... I'm also expecting a meltdown when he notices that the very big beach rocks he collected did not find their way home.

Belle - your son's schmuzzy lane reminded me of my son's 2-year-old obsession with the upside-down show. He called himself "shmuzzy" in the parent-tot classes, and collected little fuzzy pompoms and called them schmuzzies, like the critters on the show. He made different houses for them all the time.

My kids both ADORE that show! They think Shane and David walk on water!

Ok, I am SOOO glad that someone else knows what a shmuzzy is!! My DS's favorite shows are Cyberchase,the Upside down show, and he was in love with the Discovery Channel's Tornado chaser show with the TIV to the point that we had to buy the series on DVD..strange mix! I lost my mind one day and bought a bag of large pom poms and glued wiggle eyes on them and the play scenarios he made up over the following months with those silly shmuzzy pom poms were hilarious. He pretends that imaginary shmuzzys like to turn things upside down and then it has progressed into the shmuzzys inviting over their friends the snurples which evolved into the creation of shmurples...no issues with creativity here :-)

My kids just like to take turns holding the imaginary remote and making one another do strange things. It's hilarious to watch the 3yo try to do things in slow motion or fast forward.

I suspect you have to have a screw loose to watch that show regularly! Very imaginative.

Oh, and DS6's favorite shows are (in no particular order): The Upside Down Show, How It's Made, Mythbusters, anything and everything on the History Channel or the Science Channel, Dancing with the Stars, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, and NASCAR racing. (This looks like a lot, but he watches about an hour of TV a day, tops, so he doesn't see most of these very often.)

Anyway, I hear you on the strange mix!

DS4 also loves how it's made (he sometimes asks for "how it's made or how it's made type shows"). But his absolute favorite kid show is scooby doo. He likes fetch with ruff ruffman too. I think I liked upside down show more than DS4 (except for the schmuzzies) - must be my loose screws!

Too bad all our kids are spread so far apart - seems like there could be a lot of good friendships among them. They certainly would have plenty to talk about.

I know!

(And BTW, I love the UD Show! I KNOW I have loose screws. I think I also like WordGirl more than my kids do. I laugh out loud at every episode!)

I want to do that one too. But, what is Civilization 4? And, where will your time line start? Dinosaurs? 5000BC?

Mine loves RuffRuffman and has decided to be a contestant in 2 years.

Sorry, squirt. You came in mid-conversation there, through no fault of your own.

It's a video game I am utterly addicted to and cruelly recommended to others here. It's about building and defending and expanding the empire of your choice. It contains the potential for less warfare than most of those sorts of games if you want to go that route. As the war is my least favorite part of most video games but I love the building, it's by far my favorite video game and has been for nearly 20 years now!

Sad, really...

Belle, that is a HOOT!!

You guys should look up Tufte.

http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Edward+R+Tufte

Kriston,

I just saw your post about Civilization 4. We love that game in our house!! DS8 has been addicted to it for nearly three years now. He gets so absorbed keeping track of all the cities and the projects that they are building. And I admit, it is fun to mount an attack on your neighboring countries (and learn when not to too!) and understand the art of negotiations, diplomacy, and alliances. It is great at explaining playground mentality when everyone unifies to block the aggressor! I happen to love Alpha Centauri more (which is very similar), but that is the Sci-Fi fan in me. How fun to find someone else who loves it!!

The saddest part is that I've been playing for as long as I have and I still prefer the "Warlord" level the best. Shouldn't I be kicking rear on the really high-hard difficulty levels by now?

Ah, well...

Anyway, glad to have another fan around!

My DW got Age of Empires from someone.

She stayed up all night playing it.

I looked over at her when she started at 5pm and it was all stick figures making fire and building mud huts.

How quaint.

When I got up at 9am, she was maniacally laughing. She had these giant siege engines and was smashing little mud huts with them while switching around on the board so fast - fighting three other empires - with legions of siege engines!!!

Now I am afraid.

OK do this programs run on a Mac?

No idea. Sorry, Dazey. I'm a PC user, so that's all I know about.

Both AoE and Civ are pretty major games, so I'd bet there's a good chance there's a Mac version. But you'd have to google it to know for sure.

Do you find so many things (online courses, for example) won't run on Mac. We have converted to Mac except for one computer because I'm afraid we'll need it for a course or game or something. Wish we could cut that umbilical cord!

We've not done any online courses. But there are many games which are PC only. If you have a working PC, I wouldn't get rid of it. But I usually find a similar product for Mac eventually. Thinks like HeyMath! or StarFall etc run just as well on a mac.

Yes, both Civilization IV and it's older cousin, Alpha Centauri, run on our Mac. Just purchase the Mac version. In Alpha Centauri, you can win the game by several different strategies... military victory (conquering the other 6? races), technological victory (gathering all the research in the technology tree... techs build on each other, so you can't research quantum power when you are still inventing the wheel, so to speak), governmental victory (elected governor by all of the races), and several others... maybe a victory by gathering wealth? I haven't played Civ IV in a while, but it is also by Sid Meier and is very similar, but based on world history.

Sounds cool!