A few people commented that they were interested to read more of the "Reverse Thinking" lists exercises. I'll post the complete list of exercises here, along with their study categories. We haven't done them all yet but intend to get around to them because they're easy to set up and good fun.

List 10 places that cannot be destroyed by humans (The environment)

List 10 things that you will never see in Australia (Or your own country. This is national history)

List 10 outer space objects that we cannot see in the night sky (Outer Space)

List 10 things that could never be placed in the water (Under the Sea)

List 10 materials which are not used in the construction of a motor vehicle (Transport)

List 10 foods you have never eaten (Food)

List and draw 10 dinosaurs that have not yet been discovered (Dinosaurs)

List 10 presents that you know you will never receive at Christmas (Christmas)

List 10 sounds that you will never hear on the telephone (Communications)

List 10 sports that you know you will never play (Sport)

List 10 animals that you will probably never see in your life (Animals)

List 10 occupations that robots will never replace (The future)

There is space at the back of the workbook for us to invent our own. The best part of exercises like this is that they are probably reasonably easy to think up when we've exhausted all the ones in the book.

Before I leave, I thought I'd also type some good acronyms that we've learned to help memorise several different sequences and facts.

1) The clockwise order of the compass points

Never Eat Soggy Weet Bix  (North, East, South, West)

2) The colours of the rainbow

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain  (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)

3) The planets in the Solar System

My Very Energetic Mum Just Served Us Nine Pies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

Then Logan's granddad phoned him with an alternative to this that he liked better:-

My Very Expensive Mercedes Just Stalled Up Near Prospect.

However, as you've no doubt seen on the news over the past year, Pluto has recently been demoted from its title as a planet. This has caused a bit of an uproar, especially among young students. When we visited a small planetarium in the city recently, the walls were plastered by letters from children asking, "Please will you restore Pluto as a planet? We like Pluto." And while I was listening to the radio while driving, a letter was read out by a fellow who reasoned, "Where will it end? If you lose Pluto, what makes the other planets more deserving?How about Saturn? It's just a ball of gas, after all! Why should Saturn stay?" I don't know the answer to this, but we're going to visit our city museum and Art Gallery this week because there are a few good exhibitions there. One is about Leonardo da Vinci. My older nephew went to see it and said that it's quite interesting and interactive. The other is a display of artefacts that were owned by famous historical people, such as the mask of Ned Kelly. Talking of Ned Kelly, it's ironic that he's one of our most famous figures in folklore, yet he was an outlaw and a ruthless criminal. We're looking forward to whatever else might be on display and I might write about it if there's anything of special interest.