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Showing posts from July, 2013

Baby Play: Tokyo

Scott went to see a movie a few weeks ago about giant robots fighting giant sea monsters (or kaiju).  He loved  it.  The rest of our family really loves the game he made up, inspired by the movie. First, all able-bodied members of our family make towers and houses out of kapla blocks. Then the fun begins.  Scott holds up Sven, talking in his gruff baby voice, and makes him say menacing things in Japanese.  (Watashi wa kaiju!)  He helps the baby to walk through the kapla buildings, smashing them as he goes.  Scott makes the sound effects as well: giant rumbling footsteps and horrible roars.  The older boys laugh and I snap pictures. We have played this game for the past two FHE nights.  Scott, Soren, Carl, and I really get a kick out of it; Sven doesn't seem to care much either way.  But he seems to be getting into the spirit of it here in this picture: Tasty Tokyo!

Milestone: Riding a Bike!

In April, a new boy moved into our neighborhood.  He was 5 years old and could ride a bike faster than the wind.  Soren was inspired.  His big boy bike came out of the storage shed and began to see use. He learned (painfully) to ride with training wheels in May.  But he relied on the training wheels too much and they became loose and wobbly.  He hated that so we took them off.  But then he had nothing  to lean on, which he hated even more.  So we put them back on.  But they still wobbled, so we took them off.  We tried putting on new training wheels but by then he was just too nervous for anything to work and we just ended up taking the new ones back off.  They went on and off over and over again for a couple of months before I said, "Enough!" and just gave up on the whole endeavor. Then one morning (July 19th, to be exact) he figured out how to balance his bike. It was currently in no-training-wheels mode and he scooted it along like a balance bike, even though the p

Soren Figures out Math

Since Soren taught himself to read, I have been focusing a lot of my homeschooling research and pondering on math.  I have lots of good ideas (some of them directly contradictory) but still no firm plan.  I figured that since I want to hold off on formal instruction until first grade (still a year away), I had plenty of time to decide. But then Soren went ahead and figured out a lot of it on his own.  Here are some of the things he has figured out: Counting 777,199 + 1 = 777,200 "After seven-hundred-seventy-seven thousand, one-hundred-and ninety-nine comes seven-hundred-seventy-seven thousand, two hundred." 999,999,999 + 1 = 1,000,000,000 "What number comes after nine-hundred-ninety-nine million, nine-hundred-ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred-ninety-nine?  It has nine zeros. " 59 + 1 = 60 "Why does 9:00 come after 8:59 instead of 8:99?" Basic Arithmetic 5 x 5 + 5 x 10 = 75 "Five nickels and five dimes is seventy-five cents."

Milestone: Good Grip

Tuesday evening, Sven was bouncing in his bouncer, gripping a teething ring in his right hand, and "talking" when Scott came home. Addressing the baby, Scott commented, "I completely missed you learning how to hold stuff!"  And that was when I realized I needed to chronicle this particular milestone. Here's the run-down on Sven's hand-related abilities: * He grabs for everything but doesn't really have the precision to get what he wants.  Unless it's my hair.  Ouch! * He will do the two-handed close to get big stuff (like a stuffed animal).  But if he can't hold it in his tightly closed fist, he will only be able to hold it between his forearms and will soon drop it. * Carl loves to give him teething rings and he loves to hold those.  He just needs some help to get it in his hand. * He really likes to hold a blanket, bring it to his mouth and suck on it.  That's the coolest because it means he can see something, want it, grab it, and

Carl Speaks

I'm putting Carl in bed for the night.  His story has been read and his song has been sung but Scott is still reading with Soren and I want to savor the moment a little.  So I ask: ME:  Can I have a hug? CARL:  No. ME:  Well, can I have a kiss? CARL:  No.  Kisses make me wet and hugs hurt. ME:  Oh.  Well, let me try just one more thing that I really love.  Can I smell you? CARL:  Sure! ME:   (getting a deep breath of his muggy smell and a hint of coconut shampoo)   Mmmmm. CARL:  I smell like hot dogs and cheese!

Milestone: First Letters!

Carl is writing letters!  And, as Scott predicted, our little left-handed writes everything backwards.  But if you ignore the backwardness, his handwriting is very clear.  This is not something that I encouraged or taught him at all; it's just something that he has seen Soren doing and so he started doing it, too. I love this picture, which shows a whole page covered  with Carl's backwards capitals.  Soren was writing a story about his rabbit at the table so Carl sat down and started writing, too.  Since Soren was filling the page with letter after letter after letter, Carl did so as well.  I was impressed with how long he spent on it since I know that the symbols don't have any meaning to him. Or, I suppose I should say, they don't have the same  meaning to him that they do to the rest of us.  Rather than being representations of sounds and words, those symbols are magical ideograms of pure meaning.  No wonder he was so intent on his work.