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Every once in a while Cassius asks me a question I don’t know the answer to. Of course this is a very rare occurrence – but amazingly it does happen. If you know the answer let us know.
How does a rattlesnakes rattle work?
Why does a bull have a ring through it’s nose?
Are there sharks in the North Arctic?
What makes spicy food hot?
Can you go up to the top of a volcano, look in and see lava?
Cassius lost his first tooth this week! He put it under his pillow but the tooth-fairy didn’t come. (oops). We thought perhaps she had trouble finding it, after all it was just a very small baby tooth. We decided to make a little bag to put it in so it would be easier to find. I cut out a small piece of blue velvet and Cassius sewed it together on the sewing machine. What do you know, the tooth-fairy finally made an appearance, and that bag was the perfect size for a five dollar bill.
This was tons of fun and I strongly recommend it for anyone with 18 months – 4 year olds. I got 20kg of flour and poured it on a large tarp in the back yard. I put out lots of bowls, sivs & measuring spoons. We had a big bowl of cornstarch and a jug of water for making oobleck. I also filled big bucketswith homemade finger paint & hung paper up on the fence. We had the wading pool for washing of in.
What surprised me the most was how seriously the kids took everything. The just didn’t throw things around for fun as I expected. They used the tools for mixing & measuring, and worked very hard at their cooking. They were busy for hours.
Last week we found 62 eggs! This week we found 68, but Paris broke three and I broke Four. Oooops!
Cassius is very interested in cavemen right now. His dad rented the DVD Quest for Fire. “Haven’t you seen that?” I said, “Cassius is going to be board to death.” But I was wrong – again – he loved it! He asked a lot of questions and really wanted to understand the cavemen’ s behaviour and experience.
We watched the BBC series Walking with Cavemen last night and really enjoyed it.
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Professor Robert Winston meets Lucy, the first upright ape, and follows her ancestors on the three-million-year journey to civilisation. Broadcast in 2003, Walking with Cavemen combined special effects with the latest scientific theories, to show us what it really means to be human.
We love to go to Science World and have had a family membership since Cassius was two. We often go with the Vancouver Homelearners Group after our Drop-In on Thursdays. We avoid it like the plague in the summer.
Cassius loves comicbooks. They have really helped his reading skills and his money skills. Comics are a good for beginner readers because lots of the bubbles have large print sizes and simple words in them. There are lots of visual clues and you don’t need to be able to read everything to enjoy the story. Cassius started off by reading the POWS! & BANGS!
Kids love to collect things. Cassius started collecting comicbooks and all of a sudden money had value and meaning to him. He’s gone into the comic shop on his own three times. The second time he tried to buy something he didn’t have enough money for – so he was reluctant to go by himself again. Paris was asleep in the car so I said, “Here let me explain it to you?”. He had $15 dollars so I explained that as long as the numbers before the decimal point added up to $10 he should have enough money. (Not necessarily true I realize now – but oh well). I wrote some examples on a card of what he might see on the price tag. I’ve tried to explain money to him a thousand times and he’s never got it. Motivation makes such a big difference. He said, “Let me take that card with me,”and came back with a comic for $9.75!
The Noble Knights of Knowledge is a math program Cassius enjoys using. It uses stories and characters to teach four years of math concepts. Cassius loves stories so this approach really works for him. We only do one or two chapters a month, but Cassius thinks about it constantly in between. He will say things out of nowhere like, “That’s why the Lord of the Minus Subtract Takeaway Treelands is always losing things! When you minus something you take it away!”. As he’s falling asleep he often asks me to talk about numbers with him. He wants me to quiz him – but all the questions have to have the same answer. This program really stresses there are lots of ways to get to the same answer.
The one weekness of this program is also it’s strength – The beautiful glass manipulatives. You can either just use the pieces of cardboard with photocopied pictures of beads on them, or assemble the thousands of beads yourself. I glued the beads onto the pieces of cardboard which took some time. Unfortunatly Cassius’ little brother got a hold of them. One toss and all the beads fell apart! I’m planning on cutting pieces of wood and gluing the beads to them with better glue – some day.
Cassius told me he wanted to work with animals. He specified that he didn’t want to listen to someone talk about them – he wanted to do something with them. When the opportunity to volunteer at UBC Farm came up I jumped at it. Chicken are animals right! Cassius was very excited.
First we had to attend the volunteer training. I was surprised that there was only only one other kid there. The rest were all adults. The training took around two hours and Cassius was great. I carried Paris was on my back the whole time. The only thing he was interested in was the tractor.
There were so many volunteers, that we have only got two shifts so far. When we arrived for the first day Cassius said he was nervous. I admitted I was too and I said that it’s normal to be nervous when you’re doing something new.
We found 5 eggs! We broke one-oops! We decided not to go up to the house for boots, which was a mistake. We were both soaked up to the knees afterwards because the grass was so long and wet. One of the chickens had a bleeding wing ( from being clipped) so we ended up going to the house anyway to tell someone. Then we found out we didn’t have to wash the eggs yet because there weren’t enough yet.
We learned our lesson, next time we up to the house first. Good thing too, because we found out the water had flooded and been turned off.
Cassius found 32 eggs (one broken). You have to stick your hand under the chickens to get the eggs – and they only let you if you’re nice to them. Cassius didn’t have any trouble at all. 
Cassius got The Thief Lord audio book out of the library a few weeks ago and has listened to it non-stop ever since. I mean non-stop, even I have it memorized. I have to admit it crossed my mind that perhaps listening to the same story day after day was a waste of time. I suggested the other day that we go and buy the book since he enjoyed the story so much.
As soon as we got back to the car he took the book out and read the first chapter out loud – fluently! The last thing he had read to me before this was Dr.Suess, anything harder he was intimidated by. He wasn’t intimidated by The Thief Lord because he had heard all the words already. There are lots of Italian words and other tricky vocabulary that he otherwise wouldn’t have the confidence to guess at.So far he has read me four chapters. The writing is beautiful and Cassius reads it very theatrically. It’s amazing how in one year he went from not reading to reading novels. He’s very proud of himself and I’m very happy for him. And I thought he was wasting time!
Oh yeah – and the story takes place in Venice so we spent an hour researching all the locations on the internet. We even found a real picture of the bridge on the cover!
