We skipped football practice as both kids were coughing and mostly I didn’t want Daniel out in the cold as he was most sick. So we headed to the library. Alex went on the library computer. Unfortunately he can never stay for long as Daniel is not observing library etiquette just yet (he pulls all the books off the shelves or screams). Fortunately though you can access the very same games at home through the library website. So Alex came home to play some worm hunting game. In order to collect worms, you had to solve some algorithms (simple addition and subtraction). Alex was adding them all as he didn’t recognise the minus sign. Once I told him what the sign meant, he managed to solve all but one of the problems! I was surprised by this as we don’t do any maths that is not relevant to life such as many or games. He even recognised the teen numbers, he’s usually found these tricky when looking at house numbers on our walk to the park. Alex did a making patterns game too. You had to change the appearance of the character to fit in with the pattern. Alex didn’t care about getting the answer, he just enjoyed playing with the designs. I’m glad he could feel so free and not be hung up on the ‘right’ answer. I’m even happier that I kept quiet in the process!
We have played Junior Monopoly. On one particular occasion, Alex was ‘cheating’. held my tongue and let him direct the play – he didn’t want to pay me, go to jail and wanted to land wherever he pleased to buy the properties he liked best. This resulted in the game ending very quickly as I ran out of money! He didn’t do it on subsequent nights of playing. I guess he learned by experience rather than by me criticising or teaching. Another win for holding my tongue!
We visited animal land again this week as the kids love it and we wanted an update on Maggie the cows pregnancy. Daniel absolutely loves to feed the animals! though he does not want a ride on the pony. This time he sat on it though! Alex of course loves the milking the most, and talks non-stop to the tour guides about animal features!
At home, Alex often talks about cars, robots and transformers. He’s talking less about his own farm. He concluded whilst playing in the sand pit that engines in cars make the back wheels move which push the cars front wheels. I explained that whilst this was true for some cars, most cars are front wheel drive which means the rear wheels are dragged along. And some cars are all wheels powered – like a lamborghini (Alex said that, not me!) He surprises me with comments like these. I can’t remember ever having thoughts as a child that weren’t put there by a teacher, having been in education from age 4 to 22! I don’t think I even cared to know how an engine worked until I was told how (at school). Alex also asked about where the first people came from, so we sat and read together for a short while. He was quite interested in the evolutionary aspects, but less on social development.
Alex found a worm in the garden. We looked at it for a while and noticed segments, movement, and how we could see the soil it’s eaten through transparent skin. Then Alex wanted to know if worms could swim. I wasn’t keen on this idea as I did not wish to harm it but figured they would be exposed to submersion in ordinary life. So Alex went ahead with his experiment and the worm was just fine. Maybe we should find out how they breathe. As Alex observed through the glass of water, he commented on the apparent size of the worm increasing and then checked his idea using his finger. We then put the worm in the terrarium along with 2 millipedes. We moved a rock and found an earwig and eggs. I set up the microscope to look at eggs but Alex wasn’t interested. I tried unsuccessfully to hide my disappointment!
For national tree planting day I had organised that we plant trees at our local national park (also our homeschool meetup place) with the ranger. The area is naturally a grassland, and so the kids got to plant native grasses. Unfortunately only one other family came after many more RSVPing otherwise which left us with more work to do! The kids were given instructions and did a great job. The best part is that the grasses were planted in a high traffic area and the kids would see them every week at park day without having to seek them out 🙂
