The Dumb Cat

Once upon a time a bird was sitting in a cage beside a cat. She did not want to be in the cage, she wanted to fly freely in the forest. Suddenly the bird’s mind lit up like fire. She had an idea to free herself. The cat could break open her cage! The only problem was that the cat was a guard cat.

The only good thing about the cat was that it was really dumb. The bird could easily outwit the cat. The cat was trained to be a guard, but he was lazy and depended on another cat so he never mastered his skills. Everytime he needed to do guard work, he ordered the other cat to do it instead, without thinking about his own future. Finally he had turned out dumb and lazy.

As soon as the bird noticed a window in the room was open, she knew her idea would work. The bird asked the cat, “Dear Cat, if you can just open the door to my cage, I can help you out with your chores, and then get back in”. The lazy cat thought that was a brilliant idea and immediately open the cage door.

The bird flew out the open window and that was when the cat realized his mistake. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO the cat screamed, but it was too late because the bird was out of view.

Prologue

Months later the cat was given to a local pet shop. He wasn’t a guard cat any more. He wasn’t special because of the big mistake of depending on the other cat.

After 3 years in the pet shop the cat was adopted. His new owners named him Biscuit. Biscuit lived happily ever after. He was only a little jealous of all the other guard cats and how he wasn’t one any more because of the big mistake.

Moral: Don’t depend on others to do your own work or you will fail in life like the guard cat.

Happy cat thinking of bird doing its chores, and eager bird thinking about her plan!

Image credit: http://www.supercartoons.net/character/19-1/tweety.html

                                                                   

How Timetables Hypnotized Me

One day when my mom was driving my brother and me to the summer camp, she had an idea that we could do timetables on the way. My mom said it would be fun, but I wanted to read my book. She started doing squares, cubes, and timetables with my brother instead. It became a daily ritual during driving, and after a few days, I was getting jealous that my brother was popping out answers to multiplication and repetitive addition within seconds. I decided to give it a shot, and in few days I was comfortable going all the way upto table of 14 and squares up to 15. Can’t wait to get up to table of 20 soon. Learning them turned out to be super exciting, and I fell in love with timetables. I was doing them the whole way to the camp and when I reached I couldn't take my mind off; it was as if the timetables had hypnotized me. I finally had to make an effort to unhypnotized myself to enjoy the breakfast before the camp started.

Three quick ways to learn timetables:

a. Understand the pattern: first understand that timetable is just a pattern of repetitive addition. Write your own timetables using this pattern

b. Memorize in a sequence: memorize tables at least once a day and in your free time like driving or at other places where you have to wait

c. Practice in a random order: once you have mastered them in a sequence, practice them or take a quiz with a random pattern. If you can tell the answer to the timetable in 1 second, you know its now in your memory. If you are taking longer, keep memorizing

Three reasons why timetables are helpful:

a. Finish your math homework faster - problems in repetitive addition or multiplication or division or fraction; everything can be completed at fast speed with timetables

b. Impress as a Girl scout cookie cashier - quickly tell the customers how much money they owe, and also add up the money you earned

c. Manage your money: help parent to count money at the ATM or bank, and also better manage your allowance by keeping a notebook of your personal bank account

Enjoy learning your timetables!Writing Girl

PS: I used this 20*20 timetables chart to  practice

Determined

- a story by Writing Girl

Once upon a time there lived a girl named Frilly. She was always asking her parents what she should do if they disappeared. One day when Frilly woke up, to her surprise her parents were gone! She opened an ancient closet and found three kids and Tom, a dog! She asked them if they knew where her parents were and they said, a humongous monster hand took them to a forbidden castle. They knew where the castle was because they had found and explored it many times.

Now Frilly and her friends were in the castle.They were all determined to find Frilly’s parents and stop the monster hand. As they walked along they saw people in cages crying for help, and they also spotted some familiar faces. Aah sobbed Frilly; the familiar faces were that of her parents.  Unfortunately, the bad people heard Frilly and locked her and her friends in a cage too. As the day went on, everyone got sleepy and slept.

In the morning, Frilly, her parents, and her friends found themselves tied in ropes and sitting in a big room. They were given small packs of pretzel for snacks. They looked at the front of the line and what did they see?? People getting eaten and used for science experiments! Frilly was shocked, but she stayed calm, and started to think quickly about her choices. She secretly checked out the entire room by rolling her eye balls. The walls were black, faint light passed through the glazed window glasses, and there was one big iron door behind her. She started to roll slowly towards the door to find ways to escape until she hit something. This was a mouse cage; her eyes stopped at a fearless mouse trapped inside. The mouse said to her; I will gawn all these ropes if you free me up and give me the pretzels! Sure thing, said Frilly. By no time, all the ropes were gone.

Tom the dog, used his smelling skills to guide Frilly to find if there were any good guys in the castle. Very soon, they were all loaded into an airplane that flew them all back to their houses.

Back at the castle, the bad guys were wondering where all the people went. They looked outside and saw their airplane missing. The castle guard said the airplane was in maintenance and should be back anytime soon. For the next few days, the airplane pilot and the castle guard looked at the messages they had gotten from people they had saved. They sure had a lot of presents!

Frilly didn’t give up and stayed hopeful even when they were in the big room about to be eaten. This is a fictional story and may not happen in real life. But determination and hope for sure will keep the demons of our imagination trapped in a castle!

Frilly and her friends after the rescue