to hate myself for my huge gaps in knowledge I have?

[emkana]

Always wanted to be the kind of mother who could explain everything.

But come across so many situations where I know I should know something, have a verrrrrrry vague idea, but can't really give a proper explanation!

Eg today we came across Daedalus, knew I had heard the name, knew it's somebody from Greek mythology, but other than that...

whereas my mother was always a walking encyclopedia who could tell you all the details (obv didn't stick in my brain though)

I am addicted to sporcle.com - most recently I've learnt all 118 chemical elements and European countries and capitals. Next I'm going to try stuff to do with British history as my knowledge is abysmal despite me being quite smart generally - all I know about WWII is that it's to do with hitler. As for WWI well, um... Some dude called ferdinand.

Seriously, that's it.

But the point is, IMO it is a very good and important message to give to your kids that if you don't know something, you look it up, even if just on wiki to get a vague idea. Don't just shrug and say I dunno :)

As a child my parents used to set regular research tasks to stimulate the acquisition of an all round general knowledge.

We do the same with DS and DD. No internet allowed (too much temptation to cut and paste) and we believe that book research stimulates a better level of information retention.

DS's latest task is Roman Roads in Britain and DD is working on how paper is made.

It works too: DS's latest school report described him as a "veritable encyclopaedia of general knowledge".

Elephants - I could be wrong here, having not bothered to look it up but I think the Roman Empire fell about 400 AD.

Have forgotten most of what I knew thanks to being over-fed the Romans at school - endless ruddy projects as I was at junior school in a town founded by them.

YABU to hate yourself because you don't remember (if you ever knew) everything DC are learning about.

I thought I would be a fountain of knowledge to DC. DD has taken an interest in astronomy, solar system in particular. It was going ok for a while, with me answering all her questions, then she stumped me with "Does the sun turn around its axis, as well?" and surpassed me with "No, actually, Venus is hotter than Mercury because it has lots of volcanoes". Sigh.

She has just turned 5.

Mmm to go back to the Icarus ref. We bought a tent last year a Vango Icarus 600.

Me: I would like to buy the Ick a ris 600 please.

Tent man: John get the lady an Eye Car Us 600 from the back.

I didn't bother to correct him.