From: wwenger101@a...
Date: Mon Apr 8, 2002 1:23 pm
Subject: Re: [imagestream] (unknown)


Rob - this is delightful! There are a number of people on
ImageStream@yahoogroups.com who have or work with young children, and more
people than that I'm sure would be very intrigued with this. Could you
possibly subscribe, at least temporarily (through near the bottom of my index
page) and toss that account into affairs there? I think you'll also be
pretty pleased by the way most discussions have been running there, it's kind
of an island of civilization lighting up the Net.

Also, I'd be interested in your turning this into a guest article for http://www.winwenger.com, possibly for either "winsights" or "T & L
Techniques."

Thank you VERY much for writing. ...win

In a message dated 4/5/02 12:35:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
drinkblot@y... writes:

<< Subj: [imagestream] (unknown)
Date: 4/5/02 12:35:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: drinkblot@y... (DrInkBlot)
Reply-to: imagestream@yahoogroups.com
To: imagestream@yahoogroups.com

wow, this thing has grown over the years.

Hi Win, glad to see such strong support. I often wish that I was
still in Northern Virginia, so I could attend the high
thinktank/mensa meetings at the library. Even my skeptical friend,
Andrew that I brought once enjoyed the unique format and goals of the
meetings.

My two-cents: I've been working with my oldest son in a number of
areas that I have found most beneficial. Memory system(peggings,
phonetic, body list, house list, action images etc)and imagestreaming
in the form of what we call "Soldier Stories". In soldier stories we
compose an interactive story, in which I lead 'Hunter' through a
little adventure in which I give him choices about how to proceed.
The stories that I generate are basically imagestreams. Sometimes
they are more along the lines of a traditional story such as a wild
west, deserted island, jungle, space etc. Most often though they are
simply imagestreams with 'A little boy named soldier(hunter)' as the
main character.

We often begin the stream...near a stream. There is a diving board
near the stream and a little boy named soldier walks out on the end
of the board and looks down into the water and watches the ripples on
the water and tries to see the bottom...What do you see on the
bottom? A knife...A shiny metal knife glistens from the bottom of the
stream and soldier decides that he wants to dive down and get it. He
bounces off the board and plunges into the icy water. (hunter holds
breath) and he swims down hard and fast. He realizes that the knife
is further down into the water than he though, "hold it hold it". As
he swims deeper and deeper the water gets darker and darker but he
can still see the glimmer of the knife far below as he gets closer
and closer he feels like he can't hold his breath any longer but
finally, He makes it to the bottom and realizes that the knife is
stuck to the bottom. He looks around the bed of the stream for
anything that he can use to free the knife. What does he see? A rock.
Soldier picks up a small rock that is broken off and has a sharp edge
on one side. He chips away at the rock that is holding the knife
fast. Piece at a time he works his way around the embedded knife
until he knocks off the last chunk and the knife is free!

When he touches the knife he feels his lungs fill with air. He
realizes that this is a magical knife that allows Soldier to stay
underwater with out having to come up for air.

From here we could go anywhere, futher down the stream burrow into
the bottom of the silt bed, find a opening in the rock, the knife
could allow him to fly, go to space whatever the stream leads me to
do with him.

Most of the stories are characterized by problem solving, decisions,
fluidity, consequences for poor decisions (do you rush into the camp
where the kidnappers are holding the princess or do you wait for
nightfall and try to sneak in? Rush in...lol)

I borrow from every resource that I've encountered in my life; Choose
your own adventure books, dungeons and dragons, imagestreaming,
military, mega memory stuff...


We lay on the floor and put our heads together with our feet pointing
in opposite directions. I will lower the lights and let my wife know
that we are doing a soldier story. She often sits and listens but
sometimes she questions hunter about his decisions. Just out of
motherly love and her wanting him to 'do well' at the story. I rarely
try to question his decisions, I simply try my best to give him fair
consequences. I try to be creative with the consequences. But I must
admit that at times in the flux of the momement I've put the poor
fellow through some pretty rough spots. (Avalanches, indians shoot
him with arrows, monsters thrown him in pits). I never bring soldier
back to life. We simply start a new story at the stream or the
trenches.

The trenches are probably the closest thing to pure IS'ing that we
do. He starts off in a deep trench with a door in front of him. The
embankment is very high but I'll let him challenge it. He has
generally learned that it is best to stay in the trench and go from
door to door. As each door openend I make the contents of the room up
on the spot. Whatever they are, pure is'ing from door to door. Once
inside I may maipulate the components of the room to form a puzzle or
conflict.

...You slide back down the embankment to the base of the trench. In
front of you is a green door with a big black lock on the middle of
the door. Behind you is the door that leads back to the room with the
newspapers. What would you like to do? Go to the green door...You
find that the door is unlocked but it doesn't open in and out like a
regular door...it slides up when you pull up on it. Would you like to
open it all the way or just a little...Just a little and look inside
(I love him so much), you see a pan in the middle of the floor and
there are a bunch of marbles all over the floor. On the other side of
the room is a big picture of soldier with a big ball over his head.
There is no door apparent on the other side of the room. Only the
picture. What would you like to do. Take the marbles. You gather up
as many marbles as you can hold in your hands. You have about 100
marbles. What would you like to do? Go outside. You walk back into
the trench area and you see a bunch of monkeys sitting along the top
of the ridge and they are jumping up and down and making noise. I
throw the marbles at the monkey. The monkey that you hit lets out a
loud scream (yeeeawww). Then he runs off...after a few seconds you
hear a rumbling and you can fee the ground shaking...something big is
coming. You see a giant monkey, as big as king kong walking out of
the woods, he gets to the edge of the trench and jumps in and beats
his chest and howls at you and says, "Excuse me little boy named
Soldier why did you throw those marbles at my little monkey friend,
he didn't hurt you." Because he was making noise and jumping around.
Well you should know that you can't go around hurting people just
because they make noise. Now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to
toss you into the volcano. Do you want me to throw you into the
volcano? No I want to go inside.

The most important thingis that my son,
enjoys this immensely. He ask for soldier stories like most kids ask
to watch tv or to play a video game. (which we also enjoy doing
together). This makes for some extremely high quality time between us
and I enjoy it as well.

Rob Reynolds