march sixteen

The first half of our day was possibly lazy and definitely slow. aaaaaah. :)
It's a fine, fine life that lets you decide for yourself when -if!- it's time to get goin'.
Ice cream cones. Rocky Road. Might have been breakfast.

Harry's chapter five.

Jumpin'.

Playin'.



More Godzilla research, as well as Godzilla lectures. Oh, yes! One can wax Lecture upon Godzilla. Or Mario history. Or Mario info. As easily as dinosaurs, actually.

Tricks. Jumpin, playin' trampoline rasslin' tricks.

More play.

A discussion of "hang-out" time. We try to do a together time every day. To spend a few hours together doing cool things.
"Whatcha wanna do?"
"Uh..... go to the park."
" 'Kay. What else?"
"Stories!" Madeleine.
" 'Kay, what else?"

I owed Maddie Rapunzel, so she and I took care of that, first. Then read a small-ish stack of other books of her choosing.
For our Time Together, we went downstairs to investigate. 'Cause, you know. Our things have mostly been cleared out and re-organized, so most of the Stuff is downstairs.


Cuisenaire rods!


That'll do, thinks his Mama.
We started out with, "Addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division?"
"Addition!"
And so it was.
A milestone today...,. "Nine plus four."
"Psh. Easy. Thirteen."
So... since when did that become a no-brainer? But instead, "Why is it easy?"
Another "Psh. Because if ten plus four equals fourteen, then nine plus four must equal thirteen!"
Blink. "Absolutely," said his Mama. No big deal to some of you, I know, but take drills and quizzes and repetition out of it, and what are we left with? They still learn it.
On to subtraction. Mostly without the Cuisenaire rods. Because this stuff can mostly be done in his head, evidently. (Don't ask me. Wasn't like that the last time we played with numbers.)
Next we played for a few minutes with multiplication. With the rods, this time.
Then division. This was his first intro into division.
We did a bit of discussing for this one.... I brought up "Fact Families". He's bemoaned Fact Families in the JumpStart game, not knowing what the hell it has to do with the price of tea in China, but today, with the intro to division, I showed him 6, 1, and 7 go together with subtraction and addition, and also how six divided by one will still equal six, relating to six times one being six.
"Aaaah, tricky!", said he. :)
"See, Bub? Numbers aren't that strange, after all. Not so hard. They relate to each other."
A most helpful practice, today, I am thinking.
For another "together" he chose the marble run. And legos.
I set them up with the marble run while I got myself and us ready to go.


To the park! To the park!!
We found Trev's bike tire to be flat, so he took his Scoot, and Maddie and I loaded up the bike and trailer.
Out comes the Explorer Pack for the next several months! :) (Paper towels and homemade hand stuff, emergency granola bars, a magnifying glass or two, camera batteries, first aid kit, etc, etc)

Stopped at 7-11 for a slurpelicious (ick) on the way.










Madd voted for the library, and she got another "together, so off to the library we went.
And since we had a dollar or two on us, we went to our favorite pizza place for a pie to be had over library books. You know - even though Mama had come totally prepared, and we had sat with a picnic dinner at the park.

Rode home in the dark, but it's all in the neighborhood, and we do well enough.

We're happy.
And tired.
And are looking forward to one more day in the sunshine, tomorrow.

Ain't life grand?