Monday: Joshua

I get to spend Monday's with Joshua.

He spelled his name for me.  While he's been writing it for a few weeks now, this is the first time he's spelled it out loud for me.  It's a good thing that H is this week at school, because that's the one he's been having the hardest time remembering.




Then we went to the store.  The crazy kid didn't realize he had is coat on upside down until I told him.

Then to gymnastics.  Joshua had written a note for his coach and it seemed like she was having a bad day so it was especially appreciated.  He also really liked pushing this block back and forth.

Saturday: spark lab

We went to the SparkLab at the museum today.  After last rotation I had been expecting to not really go back, but we had a sneak peak of what was there this past Wednesday and they had some interesting stuff again.  I'm still not sure what I'll do when our membership is up...maybe let it lapse for a little bit and then go back?  We'll see.

Anyway, they had marble run stuff.  Isaac worked so, so hard for two hours to make his work. (And he did!)  He also found out the some marbles had a hollow inside and some had something slightly shaky inside.  One type of marble worked on his run but not the other.

Joshua stayed at the marble run the whole time to, but explored it much differently.  It started with building a run, but decayed into...random experiments I guess.

Friday: day off

Isaac didn't have school today.  We spent most of the day at home.  We cleaned off the table and got some new Legos out.  (And yes, the table is now messy again.  I almost took a picture of it for the five minutes it looked nice.)

Joshua got out his new robots.  I don't think he had fully appreciated them before, but as he started to look at the box and realize that it was a Boost set, kind of like Isaac's, he got very excited.  He worked all day to put R2-D2 together.  (And by all day, I mean every spare moment he had.  He took a few breaks to eat, have screen time, etc., but otherwise he was working on it.  I was rather impressed.)  He almost has it done.

Isaac decided to play with the pick-a-brick cups.  I was a bit surprised, but that has been a bit more up his alley lately.  He spent most of the morning doing it and some of the afternoon.  (I did make both boys clean their rooms.  Joshua has it down to a science.  Isaac decides to play with everything while putting it away.)

We're trying to make rock candy.  I don't think it quite worked...we might need to reboil it tomorrow.  However, the boys loved the super saturated sugar water.

The new dryer came today!  Yay!  People were starting to run out of clothes.

This evening we went to the library for a small pumkin fest.  We painted pumpkins and listened to some stories.  I'll admit, I've missed story time with Mr. Rob.

Thursday: fashion show

Wednesday: meh

Meh.

I could have done better today.

I'll try again next time.

Last Friday: on the way to Chicago

It was a busy day.  I woke up too early, afraid that we'd miss the train, but then everyone else woke up early too.

The boys were super excited...for everything.  For Chicago, for the train, for not going to school.  (Isaac only had a half day though.)  One of the things that I thought was cool is that as he was looking out the window Isaac was figuring out what kind of a community it was...rural, suburban, or urban.  They had studied it a few weeks ago in school, so it was cool to see it being put into practice.

Once we were almost to the train station Joshua decided he wanted to start counting the roofs of the houses we were passing.  ...well, he and Grandma counted as fast as Joshua could, which wasn't very fast.

We stopped at the hotel to drop off our stuff.  There was a bear.
Joshua: Is the bear real?
Isaac: No, it's wearing a shirt.
Later when I asked Joshua if it was a real bear he told me it wasn't because of the shirt....not because of the many other reasons that it might not be real.

We went to the Museum of Science and Industry and stayed pretty much until they kicked us out...and we still didn't get to everything.

There was a large bucket with balls that tipped over every few minutes.  Joshua was intrigued/worried about it.

Joshua carried around these two red balls a lot longer than I would have thought was fun.  Sometimes he let go to put them in the river or what not, but then always got them back again.

My favorite part was the large Tesla coil.  The boys' favorite part was "everything" (including the movie Joshua fell asleep during.)

After dinner we had reservations at the Sugar Factory.  Oh my goodness, Isaac was so excited.  Joshua was excited too, but Isaac went a bit crazy.  Everything, the food and the desserts, were delicious.

And what trip to Chicago would be complete without a stop at the Lego store?  Joshua got Kai as his Mini-fig match, which was pretty cool.

Phew.  A great day, but by the time we got to the hotel I was exhausted and fell asleep quite promptly.

Tuesday: bragging on the kids

Last week I was picking Joshua up and while he was getting off the playground she was relating a few stories from the day.  Then she said, "I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but...he's up there."

Today we met with Isaac's teacher about math.  This time his number for math went down a bit to 218, but the test changes a bit from first to second grade and with summer it was expected.  It was still high though.  Anyway, we talked about some ways to keep him engaged and pretty much ended up with the same solution as last year.  She mentioned relief that we didn't just want him set aside with worksheets during class.  :)  (During school if they're just drilling addition he might do something else.  If they're doing something more activity based it might depend on how things are going.  I get to do his homework...this week we're doing the coordinate plane and today he mapped out a smiley face.  He liked it.)

Anyway, she had so many nice things to say about Isaac too.  He's been doing a much better job getting his work done this year, and finding pockets of time to work on it if he isn't going fast enough during the set aside time.  (Yay!!)  She mentioned that he is really interesting to converse with and finds appropriate times to talk to her.  He's still a bit of a loner, but interacts with other students appropriately.  Although I feel the same way, it's nice to hear.

So we also got a packet of topics that Isaac is (supposedly) ready to learn (so that I can appropriately make the homework).  Some of these items are super surprising to me.  Let me give you some examples...
*Writes and solves proportions to make inferences about populations
*Completes complex conversions of customary units of weight involving fractions, decimals, or more than two units.
*Solves real-world problems involving least common multiples
*Writes and solves a two-step linear equation in one variable involving a real-world or mathematical context