E is playing Jump Start, the current favorite video game at our house. All four kids will squeeze into one chair, causing pushing and complaining, until I add a second chair for them. And then they all play together and take turns. Talk about family togetherness.Have I ever blogged about F in the pool? She is such a fish! She loves going under water, jumping off the side of the pool, blowing bubbles, going down the little slide, etc. Yesterday while in the pool, she was jumping off my knees and going under water. Apparently she changed her mind halfway through the jump. When I pulled her off the bottom of the pool, she turned around, glared at me, and yelled, "Hey! I...don't...wanna...dump!" She is only 18 months old! She talks better than any of my other kids and certainly has no problem telling us what she thinks. Here she is shooting the clock with the cats' spray bottle.
And S. Sigh. He isn't really interested in reading, unless he is reading his video games or Pokemon cards and books. He is just that kind of kid. So yesterday I stopped off at the library and picked out some nonfiction books about subjects he is interested in (snakes, crocodiles, Great White Sharks). He happily read to himself all the way to the YMCA. So IJ gets the fairy tales and folklore, S gets the nonfiction, and E gets books about cats. But math he likes, unless he has to do his daily worksheets. I tried to follow my curriculum and teach him how to add a long list of numbers by finding "sums of ten" first. The problem (I mean, "math fact" because math shouldn't be presented as a problem) was something like 9+3+4+1+3+8. He found the 9+1 right off but sat there thinking over the rest of the numbers. I thought he was still trying to figure out where the rest of the sums of tens were, but I was wrong. Way wrong. I tried to help with "What is 3+4?" trying to get him to find the seven and the other three add up to ten. But he answered "Twenty-eight."
Some days I want to throw math curriculum out the window and let him do whatever he wants; other days I want him to learn that he doesn't rule the world and he has to sometimes do what other people tell him to do. He is that stereotypical kid that is easily bored and entertains himself with humor. I ask what number I should write down when I'm adding the pennies in a story problem (or is it number story?) and he says "Triangle." I ask him how many hours in half a day, he says, "July." Giggling. I threaten to make him do push ups and he says, "Thank you sir, may I please have another?" I just love him.
