Learn Nothing Day 2014

Following our abject failure in previous years to learn nothing for just this one day of the year, we prepared well for today. Cleared the calendar. Cancelled all plans. Decided on a day at home, well away from anything potentially educational, interesting or informative.

I started off well, up early with Moppet and too bleary eyed to take anything in anyway. One by one the boys woke up for the day, and came and formed a snuggly pile with us on the settee.

Squidge wanted to watch some Skylanders Trap Team gameplay on YouTube. We searched and then carefully selected only videos we'd seen before, just to be on the safe side. We didn't want to accidentally learn anything, after all. While he watched that, we made breakfast, tidied up a bit, I did a bit of work... nothing risky or out of the ordinary, just a normal chilled day at home. Sprout played an old platform game that he designed at HesFes a few years ago. All perfectly safe.

Once they'd watched a few videos, Sprout went upstairs to watch some Pewdiepie, and Squidge, inspired by the videos, decided to play some Skylanders Swap Force. Totally safe: he's had it for months, no new characters at the moment, and replaying an old level. No risk of learning anything new.

He asked me what his character was, and I said I thought it was a cobra. We had a closer look and noticed the diamond markings on it, and I asked if he knew what a diamondback was. He didn't, so I mentioned it was a sort of rattlesnake, and then I noticed the end of the character's tail, and pointed it out. I asked if he wanted to see a video of one making their noise? He did, so we found one on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eWrvMGnXL4 "Oh!" he said, and then showed me the character's name on the screen. In true pun-laden Skylanders style, it was Rattle Shake :) Squidge went back to playing, and I realised that, at 8.28am, we had managed less than an hour and a half without learning anything explicitly obviously new.

Gah.

Moppet lasted slightly longer, but it wasn't long before she was showing me that she'd noticed her cup had pictures of both apples and strawberries on it, her straw had not one but two colours, and when she blows into her drink and hums at the same time it makes a funny noise.

While Sprout was off watching videos, he found out about the money making possibilities of YouTube, multiplayer mods for Skyrim, and a new YouTuber, then played a board game with his friends which he found out the real rules for for the first time, then came and learnt how to play Minecraft online on the Xbox360 for the first time, and found out some spellings to type signs to his friend. And this was all by lunchtime.

Better luck next year?