Lunar Eclispe

“I see it,” she said. “May I go in now?”

“No,” I kissed her.  “Let’s watch until it totally eclipses.  Besides, you haven’t looked through the scope yet.”

Aurora was a true champ to be outside in twenty-four degree, snowy weather at two in the morning.  We cuddled in a blanket and watched the last bright lights disappear from the edge of the moon until the dark rusty red covered the surface completely.  A blood moon.

The next morning she would be the sun, Adeline the earth, and Adeline’s shoe the moon as lunar eclipse became a game.  Her happy girls would watch the reenactment and chatter on about the special event, Aurora would fuss at her sister's wiggly toddler-esque alignment, and we would all sit together to watch NASA’s video explanation of the event on TedEd.

But in the cold crisp night, once the moon was an eerie chestnut red, Aurora asked again if she could return to bed.  She cuddled her happy girls tight and as she fell quickly back to sleep she suggested that Adeline might like to see the moon too.

Living Room Board Game

The other morning, totally unprompted by me, in fact, I was in the kitchen pouring orange juices when the girls raided the craft supplies and turned the living room into a giant board game.

 The timing was perfect.  Dad had just placed bowls of cream of wheat on the table, and we had to wait until they had cooled.

 At the girls' request, I fetched two dice.  We all took turns rolling die and hopping on the colored spaces.  By the time everyone made it to the end, the porridge was just right. 

The girls were so proud and so enthused about their game that I figured we would play again after the morning meal, but by the time I had finished my coffee, the foam circles were declared to be magic and scattered about the room.  Then they became butterfly wings.  Then lily pads for frogs.  In fact, only after supper did the circles leave the floor.   

Bugs Eating Bananas

Hungry. Hungry!  HUNGRY! 

Bananas. Bananas! BANANAS! 

Please read me a banana word.  Please.  Please.

“My!” 

nom. nom. nom.

“She!”

 nom. nom. nom.

“Tree!”

 “Good!”

 “Is!”

nom. nom. nom.

Hungry. HUNGRY! 

Please give me banana word. Pleeeeeeeease.  Please.

“Me!”

“He!”

“She!”

nom. nom. nom

Tasty.  Tasty.

Oh!  A tricky one.  Sound it out.  Tricky ones are tasty. 

“Horse!”

nom. nom. nom. 

Tasty. Tasty.

“Following!”

nom. nom. nom.

Thank you.  Thank you so very much.

BURP!

Excuse me.

Addition in Chalk

Chalkboard arithmetic may have been a mainstay of my childhood, but for my child, they are a novelty and made for a morning of mathematical amusement. 

She quickly created the template.  The five chalkboard stickers served to clearly distinguish addends, symbols, and sum.  Quickly I realized that we had never worked through a written equation so we brought in the bears.  Three bears joining four bears at a party is way more fun and less abstract than 3+4=7. 

Totals in the double digits gave her pause,

but she figured them out.  

M&M Math

Last summer when we first created M&M Math, numbers rarely added to more than four.  Numbers and addition symbols had to first be written by me and when they were transcribed by Aurora, they were written all over the paper.

Oh, and we learned the hard way that unless I was willing to grant Adeline open access to the candy, we could only play M&M Math during her nap.

Fast forward to yesterday.  Totals for addition were limited only by the quantities of candy in the bag.  Aurora wrote beautiful mathematical equations with no input from me what so ever.  I tried to stump her by varying the arrangements of the M&Ms and even mixing up the colors, but she was too clever.  She did not hesitate in her answers, wrote out each digit, and carefully choose an M&M from the pile as a reward.

Only when I introduced a zero did she take pause.  

Board Games

Make your own board game!  Play and learn math at the same time!  Invite a friend to double the fun!  

To create a board game, simply raid your craft/office supply closet/recycling bin for cool supplies.

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

File folders and the insides of cereal boxes make great game boards.Sticker dots make terrific space markers, or cut them out of construction paper or draw them on directly. 
Erasers are our favorite game pieces, but we also use plastic toys, coins, cereal, lego men, jingle bells, leaves, rocks, and sticky frogs.Use die or create a deck of low numbered index cards to determine the number of spaces to be moved.

Here are a few tips:

For kids just getting into board games, make a short board in which the spaces are pretty much a straight line.

For shorter boards, manipulate the die to only read 1 or 2.  I use washi tape and a sharpie to remark the sides with more pips. 

Taking turns is an important skill to be sure, but to maintain interest in a longer board game consider giving every kid his own die. 

Create a model of what a finished game might look like

Yesterday, we required a couple rounds of Monster Math to get us in a gaming mood, but once the kids hit the craft table they were commited.  Well, Sam and Aurora were committed.  After making boards that looked more like scatter plots, Adeline and Morgan left the table for a rough and tumble game of hide and seek.

Watching Aurora and Sam was pretty remarkable.  They each had a vision and worked so diligently towards their goal.  Sam carefully drew each number in his lily pads and then redrew them until they were perfect.  Aurora drew her path of play, methodically placed each color dot, and wrote in numbers into each circle.  This was my WOW moment full of the warm, overwhelming pride reserved only for parents. Aurora wrote all the way to twelve before asking for help.  My heart was all a flutter thereafter. 

We choose game pieces and played.  One to one correspondence.  Couting.  Addition.  Cooperation (We play that a game is won when all players reach the end).   Subitizing.  Reasoning.  Smiling.  Lots of smiling.

Silly Sock Bath

Silly sock bath!  Adeline’s favorite bath to date.  Turns out itty bitty baby socks are fun to chase around the tub, collect into piles, trade with your sister and carry around like a puppy.  To make a sock bath toss in several handfuls of baby socks into the tub (Adeline’s favorite part).  Ta da – silly sock bath!  

Physics Museum

Our math and science crazy has waxed and waned over the past four years, but recently the crazy has hit an all time high.  Math conversations are commonplace, we founded a science club, and They Might Be Giant’s Here Comes Science blasts on our radio.  But is there really any other rational follow-up reaction watching one’s daughter energetic interaction with an electrostatic generator?

The catalyst in our escalated interest in all things science was a visit to the University of Wisconsin’s L.R. Ingersoll Physics Museum (No. 14).  Whoa buddy – was it cool!  The girls pulled pullies and created miniature earthquakes.  They explored the laws of motion with Newton’s cradles and a Foucault’s pendulum.  They explored additive color mixing and subtractive color mixing before moving on to atomic spectroscopy. 

And we barely touched the surface!  We have yet to play with the display illustrating Lenz’s law.  Nor have we played with Eddy currents.  I just know Adeline s going to have a ball with their sound pipes and the oscillating transverse wave display.   The museum has computers set up for chaos demonstrations, Lissajous curve demonstrations, and a Fourier spectrum to see the sound waves of speech.  There are displays on cosmic rays, a spirograph, and a plasma tube.  So much for doing.  So many fun things for doing!

Quilting

Adeline prefers older boys.  When Sam came over for a pajama party, he and Adeline cuddled together in the same blanket.  Last Friday, after James finished playing pirates with Aurora, Adeline coaxed him into sharing a good half of his smoothie with her.  When it comes to Aurora’s buddies, Adeline is all smiles and giggles. 

However, put her together with a fella her own age and Adeline takes off running.  Such was the case this morning:  16-month old Jivan tried to give Adeline hugs, therefore I spent the rest of the morning with Adeline as a barnecle on my leg.  Yesterday, at the Hawthorne Library (no. 13) while Aurora quilted at sew-a-story, Adeline spent an hour dodging the amorous advances of an enthusiastic 18-month Owen.   In the end, the play opportunities at the Hawthorne library were so enticing that Adeline found motivation leave the safety of my legs to play. 

At the Hawthorne Library, the girls played house and hung bright laundry on drying racks.  They sung on stage, drove buses, put on a puppet show, and played in a pretty spectacular doll house.  The Hawthorne has a terrific set of kids only iPads, but my two have had such fun in their pretend play that I have yet to point out the electronic toys. 

We were at Hawthorne this week for the above mentioned, sew-a-story class in which Aurora designed and helped create her very own mini-quilt to show her own story. The class enabled us to take Aurora’s art

and turn in into a terrific quilt!

This week in various library classes my girls have created a quilt, danced ballet, performed in a play, learned art, and enjoyed several good old fashion storytimes, and this is a slow week!  Maybe it’s the approaching saccharine holiday, but I find myself quite enamored with the all the cool offerings of the Madison Public Libraries.    

Pirate Treasure

Once the map was found, our hero began preparations. 

Costumes were worn.

Upon her friend’s arrival, it was time to begin.

Weapons were chosen from the arsenal, and the map was consulted. 

Tunnels were crossed.

Monsters were battled to retrieve the missing half of the map.  It was quite the battle.  Our heros fought magnificently.

Our heros entered the bubble forest to find the secret box.

The lights from the secret box enabled our heros to descend into the pirate cave.  

They slid down the slide to the reach the glowing gems.  There under they discovered the golden treasure!

To celebrate our heros made cookies.