Numbers!
Thursday mornings are an early one for us. I need to be up by 6, 6:30 at the latest. So as I was prying my head off the pillow Cashel asks, “Time to make a ‘moothie?” I said, “Yes.” And he looked at the clock and said, “No! Not seven zero zero! Time to ‘leep!” Though I couldn’t agree more, I got up to make the children their breakfast.
We went to Shenandoah Valley Community School. I played Madeline’s House with Riesling, Cashel and Lilith while Leyland and Solomon took turns on the computer. While playing, Riesling and then eventually Cashel, would go over to see what was on the computer. They then went into the art room where Riesling painted on some cardboard and Cashel on some wood that they had found. Lilith (age 5) and I ended up finishing alone.
Riesling and Cashel chose to help Sarah and I mop the floors. Riesling played with the doll house, they both played with the piano and then looked at books. Leyland played with Cashel Smashel :) quite a bit and was very patient with him.
Solomon asked me to play Powder Puff Girls Villains-At-Large and when I let him know that I understood that he really wanted to play, but I had already committed to cleaning the bathroom first, he got upset and curled up in a ball and started growling! I asked if there was anything I could do to help him work through it and he didn’t answer. He got up and slowly tipped some chairs over and knocked some items off of shelves and tables. Sarah implored me to leave him be as he wasn’t hurting anyone or destroying anything and that he would have to clean up after himself. I went off to clean the bathroom.
After I was done I helped Solomon clean up and played his beloved game with him. Lilith played as well. At the end of the game Solomon asked me to add up the numbers on the game tiles for him using a calculator. Lilith volunteered to do it. After which Solomon decided to use the calculator to see what the largest number was that he could make the screen display. He can read into the 100s, but asked me what the numbers were when he got to the thousands. I explained the 1s place, 10s place, 100s place, etc to him and told him each number.
At some point Solomon asked me not to tell his parents that he got mad. I asked what would happen and he said that he would get grounded. This statement really made me think about what effects punishments have. From everything I’ve read and experience, punishments don’t inspire people to figure out what’s best for them and others. But instead to figure out how not to get caught doing something you might get punished for. And when people are compliant it’s because of the possible retribution that my occur.
During this time, Lilith asked me what a googol would look like. I said that I didn’t know, but we could look it up. We first looked in the encyclopedias then in the dictionary, where we found the answer to be 1 with a million zeros. Lilith then asked what the number “elephant” would look like! She went to the computer to look it up. After finding lots of pictures of elephants, she just randomly typed letter(s) in to see what would appear. She told me all about her finds and she especially like the maps she happened upon.
Solomon got board of the calculator and went to find a long stick that he had painted that morning. After seeing that Solomon had a stick, Leyland got one and Cashel was very close behind. Riesling joined in after a bit and they ran around for the rest of the morning playing some game that involved Cashel as the monster chasing them.
When we got home I read Froggy Goes to School by Jonathan London and the Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole. Riesling watched the Numberjacks. This episode involved the Shape Japer turning spheres into cubes. Of course the Numberjacks save the day. The she watched Arthur.
Joe played with Riesling and Cashel and the Lite Brite. He got out the black light to show them the difference between white and colorless. They also did their “belly button dancing show” again for us.
