What is eight?

I'm sitting on the sofa surfing the internet while Wander cooks supper. Sparkle is at the coffee table drawing. Glitter is off doing her own thing.

I come across an online discussion about homeschool math programs. Somehow, part of the discussion turns to the question "what is eight?"

One mom reports that her child says that "8 is 8....1/2 of 16, 2x4, 4x2, 1+7, 6+2, ........ "

Another mom reports that according to her child, eight is " 5+3, 6+2, 7+1, 8+0, 4+4 ("and all the opposites"), 1+2+2+3, 2x4, 4x2, 16/2, 24/3, 32/4, 40/5, 18-10, and eight ones."

On a whim, I as Sparkle, "What is eight?" She is resistant because she wants to color. Finally, Sparkle says that 1 x 8 is eight and 8 x 0 is eight. Hum. Not correct and not at all what I expected considering that I haven't done any multiplication with her.

I prompt her a bit more asking if eight is the combination of any numbers. I get a grudging "4+4=8, 5+3=8, and 2+2+2+2=8." Okay. This is much better. Nothing spectacular, but at least correct.

Then I push my luck and ask if eight is a color. Instead of finding the question ridiculous, Sparkle says that eight is green. "If it's colored, it is usually green. The whole thing is green." Huh? Where did that come from. Alas, I'm not to find out as Sparkle resists giving me any examples of where she's seen a green eight.

A few minutes and a few questions later, I found out that according to Sparkle,

1 is yellow
2 is red
3 is blue
4 is green
5 is red
6 is yellow
7 is red
8 is green
9 is blue
10 is yellow
white is 12
11 is red
green is 18

I wonder if Sparkle has synesthesia?

"Have a nice day"

It was raining this morning, so I drove Sparkle to school. Along the front entrance of the school is a long stretch of sidewalk where five cars can line up. There are five bright orange cones evenly spaced so the drivers know where to pull up. Each cone is manned by one of the older students (typically fifth grade girls) who opens and closes the car doors. These kids are the "safety patrol" or maybe just the "patrol."

The patrol kids do a great service for the school in helping the car riders in and out of the cars. They have to get to school early and they are the last ones to leave in the afternoon. The few times that Sparkle is a car rider, the patrol kids have always been cheerful and polite. Whenever they open and close the car door for Sparkle, they always say, "Have a nice day!" Somehow the old phrase feels warming, and not hollow as if an adult working in customer service were saying it. I'm glad the school trains them in this bit of politeness.

Unrelated, when biking to school, I have Sparkle tell the crossing guards "Good morning and thank you!" as we pedal through the intersection.

Pizza

I was finally downloading some pictures from my camera when I saw these pictures of the girls helping me make our traditional Monday night pizza. Sparkle is pretty good at placing the pepperoni in rows. Glitter usually places pepperoni slices randomly.



Here we are eating the pizza.

a funny little creature

Every morning at breakfast I see this funny little creature nestled amongst the pots in the windowsill. The way the branch and leaves curve around made me think of a little pod-person. It reminded me of how in "The Dark Crystal" some plants moved around like animals and some animals had plant-like appendages. I had to draw in the eyes and face for the photo.



Isn't he cute?

Away in a manger

Here's a video of the girls from Christmas break.
Glitter and the dolls all have wings are are angels.
The doll case is "the kingdom of heaven."
The star wand stuck in the doll case is the star of Bethlehem.
The rocking horse is one of the animals in the stable.
A stuffed animal is playing the role of baby Jesus.
I'm not sure if Sparkle is Mary or a shepherd.

poetry

Ever since I started doing the new grammar program with Sparkle I have been wanting to start the corresponding poetry program by the same author. According to the program instructions, I'm not supposed to start the poetry book (Music of the Hemispheres) until we're done with the grammar book (Grammar Island), but I couldn't resist. I really want Sparkle to learn more about poetry. She likes poetry, but doesn't know much about what makes a poem a poem.

The poetry book starts with an introduction to the sounds of language. We read several pages and stopped on a page about onomatopoeia. The page has a picture of some water with the words "plop, trickle, drip, and splash" superimposed on it. We experimented with saying the words so that they sounded like what they mean. Then Sparkle wanted to act out the words. She was wearing a blue shirt and skirt so she pretended to be a water droplet. We put away the book and I grabbed the camera. Here is the result.



I think that we are going to love this book.

I think I like church now

At church today Sparkle commented that she "likes church" now. This is a big breakthrough from a few weeks ago where she was particularly restless and was bored by church. I don't know what has changed but her change in attitude has helped the whole family enjoy church more.

I think that she's enjoying church more because she is understanding what's going on more. I've been helping her follow the flow of events in the missal and she's been looking up the hymns in the music issue. She's been saying the prayers more instead of fighting them. Yay.

camping in the living room

Earlier this year I started bribing my kids to get better behavior. When they showed cheerful compliance for doing stuff like getting ready in the morning, setting table, etc., they earned a token. They put the tokens into a big long tube. Last night they earned the last token. They got to exchange the tokens for a family fun event.



This time the family fun event took the form of a camping out in the living room and watching a movie. I had recently purchased small travel pillows and sewing pillowcases for them to disguise the fact that one of the pillows was pink. We watched "The Dark Crystal" and once again I fell asleep before the end.

a language rich environment

When I visited Sparkle's classroom just before winter break, I was taken aback how every bit of wall space was filled with posters of, um, well, of *stuff*. Word walls. Compass directions. Names of coins. Schedules and groups. Slogans. Etc. More stuff than the kids themselves could probably read, if only because some tiny print is crammed really high on the wall.

Then a friend of mine was talking about having posters up in her classroom. She is a physics teacher and had a hard time finding enough posters to put up on her walls to create a "language rich environment." So she hung a periodic chart on the wall to fill the space, even though no chemistry is taught in that classroom.

Huh? I've heard that a "language rich environment" is good for children. However, I think that plastering every available inch of wall space with educational posters is taking things too far. After a certain point, it's not a "language rich environment;" it is a cluttered environment.

Although Wander accuses me of filling up all the vertical spaces in the house, I think that there are other, better ways of filling our children's lives with language.

afterschooling language arts

So I'm not too fond of the academics at Sparkle's school. It's disheartening when the "corrected" paperwork that Sparkle brings home has unmarked mistakes -- handwriting reversals, misspellings, incomplete sections, etc. The work is well within Sparkle's ability but she is getting sloppy and from her point of view, there are no consequences for sloppy school work. Plus, language arts is Sparkle's strongest subject, and the public school just isn't set up to meet her at her level.

So, I've started to get creative in afterschooling language arts. I really like the Charlotte Mason ideas of copywork and dictation for teaching language arts, so I've integrated them in afterschooling.

I've started paying Sparkle for copywork. She copies lines from a beginner's bible. The sentences are just the right length for her. I only pay for perfectly copied lines, not lines with mistakes or sloppy handwriting. She usually spends the money on ice cream or Cheetos for lunch at school. I attribute her recent improvement in recognizing sentences breaks in her personal writing to this copywork.

The school gives Sparkle a list of spelling words each week. Most of the words are fairly easy for Sparkle. However, I tell her that she still needs to do "spelling" at home each day, just like all the other kids. I make sentences out of her spelling words and dictate them into a mini tape recorder. Then I give Sparkle the tape recorder and have her write the sentences. She can play the dictation over and over again as many times as she needs without my help. I've noticed that she'll naturally stop the tape player in the middle when she has a "chunk" in her head, write that bit, and then continue to the next "chunk". Some days she replays the dictation many times, other times, just a few.

The two activities above take very little time from me, so Sparkle can do them while I distract Glitter, cook supper, or do any of the various other activities that need tending to at the end of the day.

Sparkle's official homework for school is 100 minutes of reading per week. She has a reading log to write how many minutes she's read each day. However, according to the fine print, that's time spent reading *or* being read to. So a couple of days a week, for her "reading homework," we snuggle on the sofa and I read the grammar textbook to her and we discuss it. (Keep in mind this is no ordinary grammar textbook, but a book filled with fun stories.)

Oh no, noses

Oh, no. This morning both girls had the beginnings of leaky noses. Nothing major. They didn't even have to blow their noses. Both were acting fine, no coughing, no sneezing, running around like crazy as usual. I've got my fingers crossed that they don't come down with whatever virus has me going to bed right after supper.

I have a cold

Somehow I caught a cold. I think that it's from staying up late too many nights. My throat is yucky and I started coughing up yucky green stuff. On the other hand, no school today, so I can stay home and take it easy.

God has been really good to me, especially these past few days. I think that 2010 is going to be a good year.

loving the new bike

I've been really enjoying the new bike, especially since it's been too cold to bike to school these days. How can I enjoy the bike when it's too cold to ride? Because even though we drive Sparkle to school in the morning, we can still bike her home in the warmer afternoon.

Why?

Our family doesn't do massive amounts of presents. Even so, on Christmas day both girls were very happy with the presents that they got. However, since then I have overheard at least two of their friends "questioning" the number of presents that the girls got. "Why did you get only # presents?" "How come you got so few presents?"

Sigh. Why do these kids care how many presents our kids got? I could understand asking *what* they got, but the number of presents?

it's still cold

It's still cold. This morning Wander introduced the girls to one of his childhood pleasures -- stomping on the thin layer of crunchy ice that forms near curbs and ditches.

Glitter, the die hard

After Glitter's homeschool group class this morning, she wanted to go to the park for a picnic lunch and playing. Park day is a normal part of our First Friday activities. However, it is not normal to have sub-freezing temperatures. I tried to convince Glitter that it was too cold, and no-one else would be at the park. She was adamant.

We went to the park and no-one was there. Glitter still wanted to go and have a picnic. So, I unpacked the thermos of hot nesquik and the thermos of stew. After three hours in the the cold, cold car, the once boiling food and drink were the perfect temperature.



After eating and my repeated refusals to push her on the swing, Glitter finally surrendered to the cold and was willing to get back in the car.

Science Museum / Faberge

One of the fabulous benefits of the science museum classes with our homeschool group is getting the school group pricing for the special exhibits. Exhibits that normally cost $20-$30 dollars, we get to see for $5-$6.

This month we got to see the Faberge exhibit.

My favorite item was the last one in the exhibit: the Josephine Tiara. This tiara is dazzling. None of the pictures do it justice. A picture, or even a video, cannot capture the beauty of this piece of art. Although the tiara itself is almost all clear diamonds, it is alive with color. It throws of sparkles of blue, green, orange, red, yellow. It casts rainbows on on my daughter's face. The large stones are cut slightly differently, yet all fit together in an elegant, balanced whole. When Sparkle stood in just the right place, the reflection of the tiara in the glass of the case made it look like she was wearing the tiara.

I also liked the lilies-of-the-valley in a cut crystal vase. The vase really looked like it was filled with water, and the arrangement was incredibly life-like.

Sparkle loved the little egg tree. Glitter thought that the room looked like a palace and she wanted me to buy the painted silk fan for her.

No pictures for this post - photography was prohibited.

cleaner floors

Wow, I swept, mopped, and vacuumed the floors within the past three days. I can't remember the last time that happened. Maybe before kids?

earrings

Sparkle combined her Christmas money with her savings to get her ears pierced. After counting up all her bills and coins, Sparkle and I went to the mall for the big deed.

However, it had been a long time since I checked the price of ear piercing, and Sparkle was a few dollars short. Plus, I was afraid that the base earrings were too small and might accidentally slip into the ear. So, I splurged and paid the extra so that Sparkle could get the safer (and more sparkly) earrings. She is so pleased that she pretends that it doesn't even hurt.

A Quiet Happy New Year

We started the new year at a friend's house. Their kids and our kids played together non-stop. We had a fire and a few fireworks.





Unfortunately Sparkle kept falling and getting hurt, so we moved the party inside. At one point the kids put together a little singing and dancing show for the grown-ups. At the end of the show, with the music still we joined the kidlets in dancing. It was so much fun. Wander still remembers how to lead several steps and keep his balance.

We put the girls to bed and stayed up until midnight to salute the new year. Then it was time to put ourselves to bed. I'm getting old and slow.

The next morning we had a leisurely brunch of bacon, croissants, eggs, and juice. Then the party moved to our house, where the girls continued their non-stop play. I got to sew some doll clothes. After our guests left, Sparkle crashed big-time, but at least she went to sleep quickly.

This morning Wander took the girls to the park, and I swept and mopped the floor.