Domesticity
Happy Sukkot!
Brett has the day off and he’s grading the yard around our house. Madison played in the pile of dirt this morning but now she’s dozing in the backpack carried by Brett.
Noah had his eyes dilated this morning, much to his unhappiness. Now he’s making posters of superheroes as dogs (the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X-men) while we listen to “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
I’ve got our daily bread kneading in the bread machine (I’m going to make tiny twisted breadsticks, I think, with one loaf’s worth) and just made tonight’s dinner. I spooned the rest of the pintos (crockpot yesterday) into freezer bags and now I’m trying to decide which to make first: date bars or cheddar cheese mini-muffins. This is part of my quest to find snacks for the kids that aren’t pretzals.
I’m thinking that I need to devote one evening a week to work on my book idea or I will NEVER EVER get it done. Which night? That’s the problem. Maybe one night a week Brett could take the kids to the rec center to swim (our membership is about to run out — I need to remember that) and I could work then. I’ll ask Brett which night works for him. Monday nights he does math with Noah… Hmmmmm.
I found the third grade proficiency test for Ohio online for math and reading. I’m confident Noah wouldn’t have problem with the reading part and we’re eyeing the math part just to see what concepts he’ll need that he doesn’t have. Most of it looks like graphing — reading, interpreting and creating them. I think he’d enjoy making charts so maybe we’ll figure out something fun to graph. I was thinking that once Thanksgiving comes that we can graph how many houses on our street put up holiday lights. Our street is only two blocks so even if the weather is lousy it wouldn’t be hard to make a quick trip on foot ever evening to write it up. Then we can make note of different things. Like we could do a pie chart that shows how many decorated houses have icicles and how many have inflatable santas or something.
Now I need to go find my pumpkin soup recipe.
mmmm. Fresh baked bread and pumpkin soup. Sounds divine.
Funny that you should mention the house decorations as something to graph. I distinctly remember an assignment from when I was a kid where we had to do a graph of house colors on our street. I remember that the kids who lived in the newer developments couldn’t complete it because all the houses were the same color and people weren’t allowed to paint them.
Excel has really neat graphing capabilities, and can make all sorts of graphs - 3D, pie charts, etc. That might be a fun addition?
Amy, I love the story about monochrome new developpements, that’s hilarious!
I have recently decided to do almost the same thing as you — dedicate one 30-minute block per day to a big project I want to take on (which you are familiar with and have encouraged). Forcing myself to focus specifically on only IT for a certain amount of time, I think, is the only way I’m going to move it forward. I have more thoughts on this, but it’s way too long for a comment.
Hey Dawn,
Food sounds yummy! I have a great pumpkin soup recipe that is a big hit at my house and takes about 10 minutes to make –no chopping. If you want me to send it to you, e-mail me. I’d love to exchange the one you have.
HMBalison
Yumm, I love fall baking and soup making.
Happy Sukkot!
Maps are my favourite graphing tool.
We have them up where the kids have to stare at them when they eat.
I love google maps too. Lots of fun to find your house and landmarks on the map and then to click over to sattelite photos.
Here is a really fun application that I use for when I go for a run and my daughter loves to use.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/
The food all sounds so good. You need to come to my house and feed me.
happy sukkot! my kids are sleeping out in ours right now.
the graphs are interesting - i remember loving making them as a kid. he could graph madison’s vocab development. like - how many verbs she knows v. nouns. though that probably changes daily!
Also for graphing and stuff like that sports has those no. already built in. So stuff like hockey and baseball are often favorites. Also you metioned at one time he like to game so wins vs loosing or how many times he can make a chara do a certian thing.
Bert says learning how to calculate baseball stats made huge leaps in his math skills as a child. You are right the key is to find out what interests them and use it as a teaching tool.
Can you email me your pumpkin soup recipe? I’d like to make it for simchas torah… Thanks!
M