what would be a funny thing to teach my 5 y/o niece?
I'm visiting extended family for the first time in a long time, and one of my nieces has reached the impressionable age where she keeps mimicking things that she sees me do. what's a really funny but fairly harmless thing I should teach her to do?
Seconding lockpocking. Easy to learn, tactile feedback (very kid friendly!), can absolutely annoy parents. But be careful to teach children not to do anything that'll seriously get them into trouble
As a kid I also came up with "Guess when?"/"Chicken shin!" "Guess where?"/"Chicken hair!" and "Guess how?"/"Chicken COW!!" but those may not be quite as good, hahaha.
Lol! That reminds me of how (when AOL was thing and I was probably way too young to be on it but would use it to talk to family) my mom had me type out and send "I bought a bunch of cars and RECTUM!" via email or AIM out of nowhere to random family members with no context, even though I had no idea why that was funny, but she thought it was hilarious. Which is pretty damn funny looking back!
Give her some unconventional future career ideas. Non-edgy ones, of course. I think it would be pretty funny if after a visit from an uncle your kid was talking about sailing knots or embalming procedures or something.
Do something that will confuse her parents a ton. Like tell her that every time she wants something, she has to touch her nose three times then say the thing. Demonstrate it a lot to drill it in.
Tell her a fun fact, in your best science teacher tone. It takes one billion microseconds to get to one second. Hopefully she can run with this and ask more questions.
I've heard that version, and there was a version of the one I wrote out that started "great green gobs" too.
You wanna know what's surprising though? We were taught the song in school, by the elementary music teacher. She'd come through the district one school at a time, once a week and we'd have music class. Basic rhythm instruments (like those ridged sticks you rub together that we canned rhythm sticks, maracas, cabasas, etc) and folk songs and such.
It was awesome. Mrs Gore was her name. Really tall blonde lady with an incredible voice that had infinite patience with kids that couldn't sing worth a damn lol.
I've never been good at rote memorization, but I remember every damn song she taught us.
Michael row your boat ashore, Puff the magic dragon, she'll be comin round the mountain, Mary Mack, John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith (usually pronounced Yon Yacob Yingleheimer), and a bunch more.
Oh man, and my entire class when I was in second grade took part in a school show, where each class did a song. We did Amazing Grace, and there were tears among the parents, and not just of boredom or because we sounded like a random group of kids trying to sing lol. We wore these blue vests and pants (I think the girls could choose to wear skirts, I remember that not all did, but not any discussion about it). It was so damn fun.
If you know how, teach her how to whistle real high using the fingers on top of the tongue. One way is by making an O with the thumb and the index finger, bending/rolling your tongue backwards a bit and pressing your fingers against it.