Time and Money

       Its funny how things can suddenly just "CLICK" sometimes.  Sophie has always struggled with time increments (like decade, century, minute/hour) and money (remembering that a quarter equals 25 cents for example).  I think that's due in part to the weird spiral method math curriculum that the school was using.  They would just touch on a subject before going to something else, and Sophie just can't learn like that.  I never really made a big deal out of it, just correcting her mistakes or explaining when she would ask.  Out of habit, I often refer to times as "quarter of" or "half past" and that ALWAYS tripped her up.  She would pause and ask me what that meant, every time, and I would have to explain over and over.  The same with phrases like  "3 decades" or "several centuries ago"; she just didn't get it.  She's done a little better lately with money, mostly because I've been giving her all my change and she is big into spending her own money on things.  If she has a pile of change, she has to count it all up to figure out how much she has and what she can buy.  She's always been a saver (when she was 6 or 7, she had saved every bit of change and money given to her and had $150!), and loves to splurge at Dollar Tree haha.  Well, tonight we were watching one of our typical scifi like shows (Monster and Mysteries in America) and a man said he had been dealing with something for 4 decades.  Sophie immediately asked me if that meant 40 years... yay!!!  I didn't make a huge deal though, because it tends to embarrass her.  I just said yep, that's right, and we continued watching.  That really might not seem like a wow moment to many people, but it is to me.  Anything math related really comes hard to her, even when it doesn't seem math-y.  Its almost like any time a teacher even mentioned that it was in her math text, she just put up a mental wall or something.  And that's hard for ME, because I love math.  My brain just makes little math equation out of everything.  She's also doing better with things like minutes and hours because of the TV guide thing with our cable.  She can pull up the guide and see how certain shows are 30 minutes (e.g 8:00-8:30) and that would be a half block compared to say an hour long drama show, or even a quarter of a movie.  Its a very visual way for her to see it.  Fractions kind of clicked for her that way, too, when I happened across fraction strips online and showed her.  Now, she will say, "Good Luck, Charlie is on for 30 minutes, and there are 3 of them on until Daddy is home, so that's an hour and 30 minutes."  Another big step for us, that maybe most wouldn't understand :)

        More cooking stories!  We made no-bake cookies yesterday.  They're super simple and have a lot of "easy" measurements that the kids helped me with.  Sophie can whip out ingredients and measurements like nobodies business now, when it comes to cooking.  Also, I arranged them on one long piece of wax paper to set up, in equal rows.  I showed the kids how to count in a fast, easy way by saying "there are 3 rows, with 5 in each row.  That means 3 5's or 3 x 5, which is 15.  So we have 15 cookies."  Doubt this stuck with them, and I didn't really go into more than what I just said, but maybe if we do enough visual things like this, it will eventually "click" like other things have this week.  FYI, those things went FAST.  No more cookies :( lol.

        Sophie has been a texting/emailing demon lately.  She is keeping in contact with several of her public school buddies via Facebook.  I love that they are at an age where written communication is possible.  Sophie isn't a phone person (comes by that honest... I hate to talk on a phone!), but is such a social butterfly.  She has especially been talking to her BFF Makayla, and I've read quite a few of these convos (with Sophie's permission!).  They both type out all their words, no "text language" of u for you or ur for your etc.  Sophie is very good at typing out things, waaaay better than her actual writing of her thoughts.  We still struggle with her putting her words and ideas on paper.  I still blame this on being told that her written assignments were "bad" and that she wasn't good at it.  I wish teachers could understand how much damage they do!!  We have been using the Rory's Story Cubes a lot and I can't express how much I love, love, love these!!  A big thanks to a couple friends for pointing me in their direction (Felica :))).  Sophie can tell some pretty imaginative and awesome stories VERBALLY, but will freeze when asked to write a story on paper.  Something we will continue to work on, but I refuse to push her on.  I feel like if I push her with anything, she will just push back, and that helps no one.  We are still in the stages of "de-schooling" and unlearning all the bad habits and ideas that public school instilled in us both.

        Lil Man has been doing a lot this week, too, besides being a meanie.  He's rebelling a lot, and trying to push our limits.  I'm working on saying NO less and trying to pay him more one on one attention, because I think that's part of his problem.  Typical middle child syndrome lol and he's just naturally a very strong willed person, like his Daddy.  He has been talking about rhyming words a lot, and will ask me if things rhyme.  Usually they do not.  He confuses rhyming words with words that have the same beginning sounds.  Example: he will say, "Do SPOON and SPILL rhyme?" and I will say "No, but SPOON and MOON rhyme."  We'll go back and forth like this forever, and eventually, he will come up with a rhyming set, but most likely, the second word will be a nonsense word.  Its a long road, and I keep reminding myself that he is just five, and really good at math type things.  Its only normal that he isn't strong in all areas.

       We haven't really been focusing on too many "science" things lately.  We've broached the topic of anatomy when I was sick and the kids were curious about what was wrong with me.  Sophie wasn't as interested in this as Lil Man, and I didn't really want to get too awful in depth with him.  Sophie is still super into dinosaurs and reads about them a lot in her free time.  Lil Man has been investigating the world outside, since the weather has been nice, and will often ask me to identify leaves or other plants.  Max is also into the whole, "What is this?" thing when bringing me flowers from outdoors. 

     We have talked about the government briefly when we were still going the textbook route.  Sophie tends to zone out, and I don't blame her, its BORING.  She did really enjoy a supply and demand worksheet we did, and lately we've discussed some things similar to that.  Being a pre-teen girl, she really GETS the whole concept of it, and it appeals to her because of her desire to open a bakery.  We've talked about things she would like to sell in her shop, and how a lot of people really liked our snickerdoodle bars, so they would sell fast, etc.  We've also been talking a lot about our present government and how she doesn't agree with a lot that's going on.  Sophie is very into the Hunger Games; she's seen the first movie and read about half the first book.  She's been talking about how she can see how things eventually led to how they are in the story.  Very intuitive of a 9 year old I think. 

     Just a quick catch-up post since I've been so random about my posting lately.  Its been hard, being sick and trying to keep up with house work and the family.  I need more hours in the day!!!

What to do??

       We've reached a sort of impasse today.  Sophie is in a tough place math-wise.  She hates it, it kind of hate her back lol.  She can do the basics (addition, subtraction, and easy multiplication/division), but anything more is just beyond her.  She struggles when math is presented to her in anything but the most everyday way... for example, if you handed her 17 cookies and said to split them evenly between her and the boys, she could, and know that she will have 2 left over.  But if you asked her, "What's 17 divided by 3?" or even, "Sophie if you have 17 cookies and have to split them evenly between 3 people, what would each person have?" she is stumped.  She needs to see it in front of her, working.  The abstract, in your head, IDEA of math is just too much.  I don't know what to do to fix this, or if it even really NEEDS fixed.  We have calculators, they are accessible to us at all times these days, what with smart phones.  Why does she need to have it memorized that 17 divided by 3 is 5 with a remainder of 2?  I think I'm going to just let her be for now.  She plays math games all the time online, at multiplication.com and coolmath-games.com.  She uses various skills on these games, including basic math, strategy, geometry, etc.  I'm comfortable knowing she can use her knowledge to achieve what she wants.  And honestly, she has the skills she needs to do what she wants in life at this point (bakery owner/chef).  Next year, I'm buying the full set of Spectrum curriculum workbooks, which I will give her to use at her own discretion.  I don't want to PUSH her in any direction, but I want them to be there if she chooses to use them.  I'm hoping she will at least be interested in the math book.

        We finished our "Road to Revolution" project yesterday.  We found the project idea online, that a fourth grade class did in groups.  Obviously we don't have "groups", but we worked together on it.  She researched 10 events that led up to the United States becoming a country, found the year it happened and wrote up 2 sentences summarizing the event.  We purchased a medium sized poster board and I drew a "road" with ten segments for her to write her sentences in and Sophie decorated the "road sides" with trees and a period style house.  She worked quite hard on it, and we are both proud with the results.  I'm not going to lie and say she did this completely alone.  I helped her research the events, using the textbook the school lent us and Wikipedia, and helped her to summarize the events into a more kid friendly couple sentences.  All in all, though, she did the bulk of the work, and I think learned something along the way.  She didn't much like the writing part of it, as she struggles with putting her thoughts onto paper, but she did like the research and looking up ideas for the illustrations.  She does enjoy history when it isn't all about dates and textbooks.  Once again, she needs to be able to see it and have it in front of her, visually teaching her.  Words and pictures in a book are just not enough.

            We have been watching a lot of "Octonauts" on Disney Junior.  All 3 of the kids are interested in marine biology right now, following our trip to the beach, and this show is a fun way of learning snippets of it.  We watched an episode yesterday that was about a baby dolphin getting lost because he ended up being in the wrong slip stream.  This was something new to ALL of us, because even I didn't know about slip streams or that each dolphin has its own whistle that identifies them.  In the same episode was a species of fish we had never heard of called "spookfish", which are a subspecies of barrelfish who have transparent heads.  "Octonauts" may not be the most scientific of ways of learning, but it appeals to all three of the kids at once, which I like.  No one is over their head, everyone is having fun, and they are learning without even realizing it :)

         We are also into what I guess would be called cryptozoology right now.  There are several tv programs on discovery and destination America (channels) that are about animals/creatures that may or may not exist.  Sophie and Lil Man are very into this right now and have been on the fence about the actual existence of the creatures.  Sophie is more believing I think, which I found surprising considering she is the older one.  She is very fanciful though, and imaginative, thinking up stories and ideas that are less realistic in nature.  I like when the shows take a more scientific route than just a retelling of people's stories, personally, because they see how "scientists" or researchers find evidence either way and theorize from there.  They both like ghost hunter type shows, too, and often have their own expeditions.  Sophie uses her ipod to record them trying to find the ghosts or creatures, or acts like they have caught evidence of either thing.  We have discussed how scientists theorize that ghosts are a type of energy and therefore show up using several devices that measure different types of energy, like the people of TAPS use.  I think we will do more research on that and maybe conduct our own "ghost hunt".