Learning By The Way

Here’s Samuel with a goofy grin, after opening his birthday present. It’s Heroscape, a game he really, really wanted.

Last week, my sister and her husband and 4 children visited. We had a lovely time. I wish I had taken more pictures! Bruce and Donna make really cute children. Their son, Benjamin, is one. Peter played with him, and crawled around following him. They were adorable together. But did I get any pictures? No! Ah, well, you’ll have to take my word for it.

Donna and I, and her two older girls, and my girls, went shopping one morning in Peoria Heights. We discovered a new bookstore there, I Know You Like a Book. The proprietress is a lovely lady. She offered us coffee and cookies. The children made use of the comfy chairs to sit and read while Donna and I browsed (We made several ‘finds’ among their new and used books- a favorite is the book I found on making hand shadows of various creatures. The boys stayed up late one night using this book to make elephant, camel, and dog shadows on the wall). We also visited Global Village for the first time. I’ll definitely be returning there as a great place to shop for birthday gifts and such. They are manned by volunteers, and sell only fair trade products. Our last stop was Free to Bead, where the girls picked out a few beads each to make their own necklace.

Their last night here was our monthly game night. We set up a baby and toddler area in the girl’s room, and I had a lot of fun there, hanging out with the tiniest people. It was, as always, crazy. Games broke out right and left, active outside and board inside. Once Crystal started reading a book to two children and was suddenly surrounded by a hoard of children wanting to get in on the action. I’ll add pictures of game night later, as soon as I can figure out how to upload the things.

Moriah’s job on Thursday is to iron napkins. She approached me smiling with her stack of neatly ironed and folded napkins, and said, “I ironed 8 napkins times 3, or 3 napkins times 8, or you could just say 2 dozen!” How could I help but be pleased?

We are home again, after a week on the road. Do not let the title mislead you, however-we did not go to market to buy a fat pig. We instead took a whirlwind trip involving the Generations conference in Abingdon, VA, where James had a booth for Samaritan. We ’swung by’ NC first to pick up my cousin. It was really nice to get to spend some time with her. And not just because she claimed that she would enjoy cleaning out our van if only we would let her (we did). Thanks, Eva! Then we dropped her off in NC, and my sister, Raquel in SC (where James had a meeting). Raquel will be flying back next week after a peaceful 10 days at my parents house. I hope she is enjoying her stay, sans 5 active and sometimes even noisy children.

It was a nice trip, beatiful scenery, encouraging conference, great time (though too short) with family. However, the trip summary would not be complete without mentioning the following list of lost items:

James’ briefcase, left in the hotel parking lot in London, KY. This contained his laptop and asthma medication. By God’s mercy and care to His poor, forgetful children, it was returned to us by hotel management on the Fedex truck on Saturday. In fact, it came in the same truck as…

Bryan Evan’s extra van key. His key was lost somewhere on Mount Rogers during a biking excursion. Our van did double duty for two days, making two trips back and forth to the conference. We had to make two trips because our little ole 12 passenger van won’t fit their family and ours.

And last but not least, my purse ended up taking a side trip to Georgia after being mistakenly picked up by another family attending the conference. It should be arriving home any day now.

One thing I really like about the Singapore Math books is that they are introducing 2 stage problems that really promote thinking and not just mindless activity. For example-

 A mailman delivered 1050 letters on Monday. He delivered 206 fewer letters on Tuesday than on Monday. How many letters did he deliver on both days?

The student has to subtract to get Tuesday’s total before he can add to get the total for both days. So even though this is a review for Moriah, Samuel, and Toby, it really keeps them on their toes to think through the problem carefully. Moriah is ready to start on Section 2 in her 3A book on Monday. Samuel and Toby are a couple of exercises behind that.

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This morning I gave Peter several math pages to work on. Three were on identifying shapes, which he can do quite easily on his own. Elsie was glad to ‘help’ him though before starting on her own math, and the two of them sat and giggled their way through the worksheets. From what I gather, they added to the directions by not just circling the requested shape, but also keeping track of how many were found by making hash marks at the top of the paper. For some reason incomprehensible to me, this was very amusing. And then when they went on to the “Counting up to 18″ worksheet- oh, my! Math is just too funny for words.

 

I really meant to post about our Lakeview Museum visit before we left on last week’s trip- but of course, it didn’t happen. It was such a productive visit, though, I can’t let it go without mentioning it.

 The current exhibit there is called Tech City. It is about various types of engineering, with interactive learning stations. I played at the sound and recording station with Elsie. The boys had a lot of fun trying to build earthquake proof houses- then flipping the switch to allow the plates beneath them to begin shaking, to see whether their creations continued to stand. Peter really enjoyed dabbling in the water at the dam station. We could have spent a lot longer there, experimenting and learning. Maybe we’ll make it back again before the exhibit ends…

We also got to pick up the children’s Peoria Area Science Treasure Hunt passports. They filled out the answers for the Lakeview Museum page, and got their passports stamped. They need to visit 7 more local science related destinations to answer questions and get their passport stamp. They then complete some experiments, send in the entry form, and are entered in a drawing to win some really cool science prizes. There are some neat looking destinations on the list, some that I didn’t know existed. All the children put a laser manufacturing tour in East Peoria  on their “must see” list.