Friday Follies

WORK IT OUT: We didn't waste much time this morning before diving into math. First we talked about what we did yesterday. Then I showed the kids an interactive tool on textbook giant Houghton Mifflin's Web site that gives math tips. It's called "Math Test Helper," but I thought its advice was good for any ol' math assignment.

We went over the site's first two bits of advice. Tip number one was "Draw a picture." The mentor is a rhinoceros and he talked us through the good reasons for drawing a picture or symbols when trying to solve a problem, and showed some examples. After he said his piece, there was a mini test with three problems. CJ and Annabelle worked together and solved all the problems correctly, earning a "good job" type certificate, which they were pretty proud of.

The second test gem was "rule out wrong answers," which is something I've talked to them about before. The rhino gave us some example problems with multiple choice answers. For instance, if you're trying to solve something like 73 + 22 = ?, clearly the answer is not going to be anything less than 73, so those answers could be crossed off immediately.

We also checked out another Houghton Mifflin math activity, RoboPacker. According to the instructions, robots are ready to leave the factory and travel to a new home, but first they need help getting packed in suitcases properly. In order to make the odd shaped robots fit, you have to slide, flip and turn them. It starts off pretty easy, but gets progressively more difficult.

We also worked on memorizing multiplication tables in the car this afternoon. Annabelle recalled several of the answers from yesterday and shouted out answers right away. CJ, not so much. But that's OK. The lightbulb will go off, sooner rather than later, I'm sure.

LEAVES AND GREENS: We spent some time this afternoon in the futile exercise of raking up leaves in our yard (it seemed like they were falling faster than we could pick them up.)

Then, we headed out for Swanson's, our favorite local nursery. I needed to get some new plants for our new planter, which you can see in the background of the photo below (it's long and dark brown).

We found planter plants aplenty, but also took the time to peruse their grounds. We visited their impressive koi pond, the playhouse and found the hen house. The nursery's urban chickens have grown a lot since we last saw them. They came to Swanson's on Mother's Day as 2 day old chicks. Milli and Margaret look full grown to me now.
Annabelle started making some pretty convincing chicken noises - this one started talking back to her.

We also got to see Swanson's hay maze under construction.

We'll certainly have to go back between now and Halloween!

ALL ABOUT OCTOBER: We spent about an hour this morning learning about October and things related.

We started by reading "Pumpkin Circle," which was a story following a pumpkin's life cycle from seed to seedling, to tiny plant. We saw the flower buds appear and open into velvety orange blossoms which were visited by bees. We saw growers tend the fruit and finally it was harvest time. We saw the pumpkins used in different ways (jack-o-lanterns, in food), and we saw them recycled - seeds harvested and shells composted.

Then we just talked for awhile about what symbols are, and I asked kids what they thought some symbols of Halloween are. That made for a good lead-in to reading "Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts - The Story of the Halloween Symbols."

We learned the origin of witches' broomsticks and black attire, and that turnips were hollowed out and illuminated before pumpkins became popular. We learned why black and orange are Halloween's colors (black = death and orange = leaves and produce being harvested at the time).

The third book we read was "Halloween" from the Let's See series of books. Pretty much the same symbols were covered, but with lots less words and color photographs (as opposed to black and white sketches), so it was a nice balance of approaches.

When we got the mail today, there was a nice surprise awaiting CJ. It seems the folks at Pop Tarts are keeping track of him, and they mailed him a happy half birthday car, banner and two-pack of S'mores flavored Pop Tarts. He was ecstatic, as you might imagine.