Bits & Pieces

Seth was playing in his room when he called to me excitedly.

"Mom, come and see my Cowboy Pooh!"

Apparently the binoculars you see under the stool are Pooh's "tail lights". The rest......I really don't know. Although Seth does, I'm sure.

We had been out and about later and Seth had been a toad, pretty much disobeying me everywhere we went. I informed him that he would be going to bed when we got back home, much to his dismay. He hates going to bed. When we arrived home, I had something on my mind and, in all honesty, there was a good chance that I would have forgotten what I had promised.

My son hadn't.

"Am I still going to bed, mom?" He apparently has yet to figure out that there are times when it is to his advantage to stay quiet. I told him that he was, amid his protests. So, he went straight to his room and hopped into bed. When I went to check to make sure he had obeyed me (for a change), this is what I found:

He consoled himself by making a bed in his castle.

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I recently changed math programs for both of my kids. Hannah had been struggling a little more with math this year, so when I went to the homeschool conference, I attended a session on Math-U-See. I had already pretty much made up my mind to use this curriculum because it comes with rave reviews from so many of my homeschooling friends.

On the advice of the Math-U-See representative, I stopped Hannah's old math curriculum immediately and began the new curriculum this week. Math-U-See is a different approach and requires some "unlearning" of the typical math approach. I was told I could wait with Seth until next year to start his because he is just at the beginning stages of math anyway. However, I was finding it very difficult to do this with him because once he saw the manipulatives that are used in Math-U-See, he wanted to "do his math" that way, too. So, I decided to start Seth on his Grade One curriculum and see how it went. I could always stop it if it proved too much for him.

It is a BRILLIANT course. Especially for boys. Especially for boys who want to "make chairs and tables" when they grow up.

As you can see in the picture below, Seth had a blast. The best thing about it? Instead of finding different rewards daily for his accomplishments, he is totally satisfied with being rewarded by being able to build his own house AFTER he is done his work.

I think it is a police station. Or fire hall. Or something. Whatever it was, it had a huge deck out front......