Number Line

Today while the 2 big kids were at school and Ezra was napping I had a wave of inspiration for a fun way to introduce Cartesian coordinates to kids, starting with a one-dimensional number line. So I did some prep work, and later this afternoon when the kids were home and at a loose end we did a number line activity!

I started by explaining a number line. Then I have each kid a small slip of paper with a "secret" number of dots on it, and told them to get us to guess how many dots they had by marking it on the number line.

Then I have them each several small slips of paper, with varied number of dots on each one in different colors, and had them mark those numbers on the number line, using the coordinating color.

Then I have each kid a sleeve protector with a paper number line inside it, so that they could write in them with dry-erase markers. I then hid four Easter eggs for each kid, each egg containing a different number of raisins. The kids enthusiastically hunted for and found their eggs.

Then they brought their eggs back into the office and counted the raisins in each one, and marked the number for each egg in the matching color dry erase marker in their number line.

Ezekiel seemed to really enjoy this activity, and asked for more after he had finished. Here he proudly displays his first graph of data!

Jane was able to follow along after watching Zeki do it a bit. In the end she did quite a good job too, but was more work out from the exertion and was ready to be done with math for the time being.

I went on to show Zeki how to do addition and subtraction using a number line, which he easily mastered, with great interest.

I was overall very pleased with how this little schooling activity went.

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jane, age 3

Jane is my super big helper lately. The other day she was helping unload a box of diapers and put them away. I was busy doing other stuff so I didn't pay much attention to what she was doing, but I later found the very neat arrangement in the diaper cabinet.

This is in an upper cabinet above the dryer, so she must have climbed up onto the dryer to put them away. I wonder how long that took her, getting them into all those neat little stacks of about five each.

I am often impressed with the logical constructions she makes. For example, today we had some friends over who have both a 3-yr old and a baby. As I was getting Ezra settled for his nap, I heard The 3-yr. old friend come out of the bathroom. Jane said "you forgot to close the door, so the babies can't get in there" (Jane usually helps me close all bathroom doors so Ezra won't crawl into them.)

Friend: but our baby isn't big enough.

Jane: oh, well, can your baby crawl?

Friend: no

Jane: ok, then, we can leave the bathroom door open as long as Ezzy is sleeping.

I find this an impressive train of reasoning for a 3-yr. old.

 

 

Preschool!

 Zeki and Jane started preschool this week! Jane is going Tuesday/Thursday, and Zeki is going 5 days a week. They both seem to like it so far!

Zeki gets to do Spanish on Wednesdays. They both have outside play time each day, as well as P.E.. And they both seem to like their teachers and classmates!

 

Justin turns 30!

Yesterday was Justin's 30th birthday, so the kids and I spent the morning scrambling around to get him the birthday present I had been planning for months. Turns out we were able to get a pretty cheap Wii U from a store going out of business!

Justin graciously agreed to let the kids help him open his presents. Jane was all "ok, how about his: I open the ones without ribbon, and you open the ones with ribbon." I think she might have been under the impression that if she opened a gift, it would be something interesting to her.

 

For dinner we had steaks (which Justin grilled), cabbage salad, mixed roasted veggies, and Mac 'n' cheese. Of course there were leftovers (though only a tiny bit of steak leftover), so we are Mac n cheese and veggies for lunch today. And Jane got the last little bit of steak.

Jane: I want 10 more pieces of steak.

Me: we don't have that much steak.

Jane: can you call dad and tell him to come home and cook a lot of steak?

 

 

Half-hearted school

I sometimes see stuff in Facebook about people doing all sorts of fun creative schoolie stuff with their kids. My kids like schoolie stuff, and I have been wanting to be more productive lately. So after a brief nap and about 1/3 cup of coffee this afternoon I was like "hey, I think I will sit down and prepare some activities for the kids to do to learn numbers and stuff!" So I did.

After the kids were all awake and done with snack I told them I had some school for them to do and they were all excited. I had each kid practice tracing some letters and numbers, which was ok. But I was more excited about fruit loop math- for Jane it was simple addition problems for her to model with fruit loops, and for zeki it was addition problems with larger numbers, followed by some subtraction problems. The kids actually seemed to enjoy this. This was one of the first times I have really worked with Jane on this, and she got really excited when she was able to successfully complete them on her own. 

Ezra did not want to be left out of the action. He is also now developing the skill of pulling up on stuff, and found the little work table where the big kids were playing with fruit loops to be a worthy object of pulling-up practice. Jane was all like "moooommm! Ezzy is trying to grab it! NOOO Ezzy!"

I wonder if I would have been more motivated to continue the school stuff is Ezra had not been so disruptive. I feel like that's kid of the story of my life these days though. How do parents with babies homeschool the older ones? This mini schooling experience validates my plan to not homeschool our children. But we may continue to periodically do half-assed schoolie activities, which can be fun at this stage when there is no real need to actually learn anything.

 

 

 

Today we went to the Midland County Fair! Sadly it was just the kids and me- Justin wasn't feeling well.

In the first area we. He led out there was a bunch of stuff (junk) for sale, but we did see this awesome stuffed armadillo (sadly not for sale).

Next we saw this nice tiny home! It occurred to me that this would be a super fun play house for the kids.

Then we headed to the petting zoo, which turned out to be the best part of the county fair.

There were llamas.

There were adorable baby chicks!

There was a kangaroo!

There was a porcupine (shown with quills out)!

There was a camel.

There was a snake.

We fed the llama.

Then we left the petting zoo to check out the food trucks. Annoyingly, yet not surprisingly, it was the same stock of unoriginal food trucks that appear at all midland- are fairs and stuff. I am always hoping we will find fun, down-home food trucks with unique fare prepared by quirky but enthusiastic cooks. But instead we find a bunch of bored-seeming vendors selling the same funnel cakes, turkey legs, corn dogs, popcorn, etc. we have encountered the same troupe of food trucks at the airshow, 4th of July celebration, mall parking lot carnival, and now the county fair. The kids didn't seem very hungry or enthusiastic about any of the food, so I was just as happy to just get the sno cones, which they loved. 

Then we headed over to the carnival rides. We had planned to do the Ferris wheel, but it was $5 per person, and I would need to ride with the kids, making it cost a total of $15, assuming they did not make me pay for Ezra. So instead I opted to pay $3 each for the big kids to ride the "car merry-go-round" (as Jane called it). They had fun.

Ezzy and I watched.

Then we went home, since everyone was hot, tired and hungry.

First Camping Trip!

This past weekend we went on our first camping trip as a family.  My parents were planning on coming too, but sadly at the last minute my dad found that he had a whole bunch of work to do, with deadlines looming, and decided it was infeasible for him to come.  He was missed. Mama still came!

We went to beautiful Enchanted Rock.  I remember that as a kid my favorite part of camping was hanging out at our campsite- sitting around the fire, toasting marshmallows, trying to turn our tent into a cozy home-away-from-home by filling it with all the stuffed animals my sister and I were able to cram into our duffel bags.  I think that our tot enjoyed these same aspects of camping.

But he was also a great trooper when it came to hiking on the rocks! In fact, we could hardly keep him at the site- he kept wanting to go climb up the rock face that was right nearby.
We didn't sleep so well on Friday night. Our plan was for him to share a sleeping bag with Justin, which kind of worked for several hours.  Little guy slept on and off, interspersed with wiggling, trying to climb out of the bag, and saying "Mama! Dad! Mama! Mama!" Around 3 am I offered to take him in my sleeping bag for a while, thinking, "hey, I'm not really sleeping anyway."  So he spent the next hour or two not sleeping next to me. He finally dozed off around 4, by which time I had to go to the bathroom and was in a rather uncomfortable position, but dared not move for fear of waking the tot.  So we were all pretty tired on Saturday for our big hike, though we adults were able to handle a little bit better than Zeki.  But he didn't his tiredness ruin the hike. He almost dozed off while riding on his daddy's back.
                                                
He enjoyed our snack break. I think out-of-the-ordinary foods are one of the most fun things for kids on any vacation.

 When we reached the top of the big rock, Zeki was delighted to find this little pool filled with rain water.  It had become quite hot during our hike and the warm clothes we had put on that morning at the campsite were rather uncomfortable.  Little guy got to enjoy rolling up his pants and wading in the little pool.

By the time we left that afternoon, his lack of sleep the previous night and missed nap Friday afternoon caught up to him.

We decided that for future camping trips, if we have a tot and a pregnant mama, the most we should try to do is one night at a time (this trip had originally been intended as a two nighter, but after the first night we didn't think we could enjoy that again).