You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2007.
For about six weeks this summer we barely left the house. We didn’t have a car and Tyler (Dad) was working long hours. Cassius spent all all day up on his loft bed (out of his brother’s reach) reading and building Lego. It was a nice break, but when the opportunity to go to Knight camp at Acedemie Duello came up Cassius jumped at it.
The camp ran Monday to Friday 10-3:30. This was the longest class Cassius has ever taken and the closest thing timewise to school, so I was wondering how he would find it. He loved it. “It was Awesome!” was his exact opinion. He did really well too, considering the age range was 7-14 and he was one of the youngest. I took fencing in theatre school, and found that it took a lot of concentration and could be quite tedious, so I was really proud a t how hard he worked.
The teachers worked the kids really hard too, and Cassius came home everyday tired and sweaty. He learned the art of Sword and Shield, Longsword and Wrestling. Everyday they focused on a different knightly virtue, such as of chivalry, fairness, and generosity. They also learned midevil games and history.
We are trying to set up a weekly homelearners class for the Fall and really looking forward to it.
Paris loves to pour things out. He’ll spend hours pouring water at the sink. I spend all day stopping him from going into the fridge to pour out the milk. He poured out an entire bottle of rosewater last week and I had a horrible headache for the rest of the day. He has poured a glass of cold water on his sleeping Dad more than once.
He has poured out at least $100 in bath products; shampoo, soap, massage oil. He can reach everything and gets through all the baby locks.
He acts all innocent too and everyday I fall for it. He takes the lid off the juice and pours just a little bit, very tidily, and puts it back in the fridge. He sits there with a look on his face that says ” I could never spill a drop – how could you ever suggest such a thing. But as soon as I turn my back on him he dumps it,with a big satisfied smile on his face. If I try to pour him a drink myself or use a sippy cup he throws himself on the floor and cries like his heart has broken.
Did I mention he flooded the entire kitchen by plugging the sink and turning the water on full blast. I was upstairs for five minutes and when I can down water was creeping down the hall into the living room.
Why do I give in and let him pour his own drinks you ask? Why don’t I insist he stay away from all liquid and receptacles? (Not that I could stop him if a I tried – and believe me I do try.) The reason is that, besides the fact that he gets pleasure out of being naughty, pouring seems to be very important to him. He goes out of his way to do it and gets very upset when he can’t do it. I suspect one day, when he is a small dam designer, we will look back and say – ” It all makes sense – that’s why you did all that pouring!” Maybe we won’t, but I know he is learning something valuable even if I don’t know exactly what it is.
“There is just one thing I can’t figure out. Why do we trade stuff for paper? It’s so stupid! Why don’t we just share? If we didn’t have money nobody would be poor.”
That’s Cassius’ take on money. He gets very passionate about how ridiculous he thinks it is. We’ve decided to investigate the matter – I’ll let you know what we find out.
A 7 year old boy travels 1hr on 2 buses and walks 15 minutes down a road. He comes to a farm with 90 chickens, divided into 2 chicken runs? There are 51 chickens in the red coop and 39 in the green coop. It’s a sunny day and it takes the boy 1 hour to collect all the eggs and feed the chickens. It then takes 1/2 hour to wash, dry and sort the eggs. He fills 5 1/2 cartons. There are 2 cracked eggs left over. The boy, his 2 year old brother, and his mother, then sit in the shade and eat 3 cups of blueberries. How many eggs did the boy collect?
Who knew chickens were math?!
