learning things backward

I have a talent for teaching skills in the wrong order. I noticed that Glitter sometimes has a hard time telling who's who in stories. So, I read her a picture book and at the end of the page I had her name the characters in the picture. She stared at the picture for a while and couldn't figure out who it was. Then she started searching the text, hoping to find the elusive name there!

Normally emerging readers look at the pictures for clues to help decode the words. Glitter was doing the opposite. She was looking for a clue in the words to figure out the picture. How crazy is that?

Glitter gets the best of both worlds

Glitter loves music and dancing. Every now and then her piano teacher throws out a wildcard where the student gets to pick what to do. Glitter picked having her teacher play the piano while she danced.

the dress

I finally finished Sparkle's first communion dress, with several weeks to spare. This was probably the most difficult dress that I've ever made. It is fully lined and the fabric is *slippery.* You can't tell in the pictures, but the gauzy fabric for the veil is also used as an overlay on the bodice of the dress.





I think that the dress is a little over the top, but Sparkle and Wander both like it.

Glitter Anki

Normally the girls review their Anki decks for memory work at a table on on the sofa. However, sometimes they have so few questions that it isn't worth moving the computer.

Here's Glitter reviewing her Anki deck. I think it's cute how she's standing on tip-toe.

Quiet play / portrait

To my great surprise the girls decided to spend some time Saturday afternoon not running around, screaming, giggling, and generally making an uproar. Instead, Sparkle decided to draw Glitter's portrait, and Glitter actually posed for several minutes.



The model.


The artist at work.


I don't know what happened to the portrait. I need to find it and take a picture.

Sparkle Math

Sparkle's math lesson had her converting money amounts from dollars to dimes and pennies. She could do a few with smaller numbers, but when the numbers got larger, she was stumped, so we got out the manipulatives. The top row is 5109 in base 10 blocks representing 5109 pennies. I don't actually have 5 thousand cubes. I only have 3 thousand cubes. However, I have enough hundred flats to make up the extra thousands, with some more flats to spare. If you look closely on the far left, you can see a unit cube perched on a penny. Then Sparkle converted every 10 pennies to a dime, to build the middle row, 510. On the far left is a unit cube on a dime. Finally, Sparkle converted every 10 dimes to a dollar, building the bottom row, 51. On the far left is a unit cube on a dollar.