Math strategies

The instructions on Jordan's math homework today were simply, "Number Stories.  Show your work."  The first problem read:  "Tucker had 12 silly bands.  His mom bought him a pack of 5.  Now how many silly bands does Tucker have?"  (Silly bands, in case you don't know, are rubber bands in the shapes of things, and they are the hot thing in elementary schools right now.)  Jordan thought, and did some silent counting on his fingers, and said, "Seventeen!"  I said, "Okay, now it says to show your work, so draw how you got that answer?"  He drew this:

and explained that he had counted up from 12, and had kept track of how many he counted up on his hand, until he was holding up 5 fingers on his hand and that was 17 in his counting.

This knocked me out.  I was expecting your basic picture of 12 silly bands, then 5 more silly bands, and counting the whole group to get 17.  This was much more interesting.  The next one read, "Hannah brought 20 cupcakes to school and 12 people ate one.  How many cupcakes did she have left over?"  For this, Jordan made a more typical 20 tally marks and then erased 12 of them, then counted the remaining 8.  But, more fun: he also drew himself holding the paper that he used to solve the problem.

Last but by no means least, we had this problem:  "Shannon has 8 gummy bears.  Her friend gave her 8 more.  Now how many gummy bears does Shannon have?"  Jordan instantly said "Sixteen!"  I said, "Wow, you knew that right away!" and he said, "Because of the inchworm song, Mommy.  Eight and eight are sixteen."  Then he drew the inchworm.

I was loving this, for sure, but I was a little worried that Jordan's unconventional representations would go unappreciated by his teacher.  So at the dropoff this morning, I chatted Miss Wodrich up about what a good time Jordan and I were having with his different ways of showing his work.  To my delight, she said, "Yes, that's what we do in class with our mini white boards; everyone has their own board, they show their own way of doing a math problem, and then they share their way and we talk about all the different approaches."  How great!

Speaking of the inchworm song:  I'm not sure I had ever seen the Danny Kaye movie or heard the song in that context - I think I only ever heard it on Sesame Street.  I am startled to learn that in context, the song is not extolling the fun of arithmetic at all; if anything the Danny Kaye category is pitying the children learning rote lessons in school, while the truant appreciates the wonders of nature (the inchworm on the marigolds).  YouTube, how did we ever live without you?

Aaron the big kid

We have got some major milestones in our household, folks.  First and foremost:  No more diapers, at all.  Not all day, not on outings, not at naptime and not at night.  No pullups, nothing.  Just great stuff like octopus underpants.

Second major milestone:  The big kid car seat! 

Aaron is thrilled to be in a seat like his big brother's, and we love how easy these seats are to get in and out of, move from one car to another, etc.  

Third major milestone:  The emergence of representational drawing.  This is an anglerfish.  

Coloring inside the lines, not so much. 

Jordan, as is often the case, was compelled to show us how it's done.

Next major milestone:  The dentist.  I'm cheating a little on this one because the milestone is not that Aaron had a dental exam... he only observed his brother having one.  But he did so without screaming and panicking, which is all he did the last time he was in this office.  So I felt it was a success.

Jordan was very cooperative except that he could not, would not, lie down.  Once the hygienist decided to roll with it and let him be upright, things went quite smoothly.  In these photos he's having a fluoride treatment.  As you can see, Aaron watched with interest.

Though Aaron is quite grown up now, he still takes a long, deep nap pretty much every day.  At school, he is usually the last one to wake up; the hubbub of the classroom is all around him, and he is still out cold.  That's his teacher Courtney and his classmate Diego in the foreground.

First grade

First grade seems to be going well for Jordan.  On the first day of school (which was three weeks ago now), he ran with glee to meet his buddies that he had not seen all summer, and they immediately started aping around.

It happened to be a rainy day, so the lining up took place inside.  Here is his new teacher, Miss Wodrich (pronounced Woodrich), at the head of the line.  That's Jordan in the orange coat with the blue backpack.

Miss Wodrich is as new as next week.  Not only is she a brand-new hire, she's a new teacher; she only graduated from college a year ago, and spent the last year as a substitute in the Seattle schools.  I'm electing to believe that we're getting the advantage of all her freshness and enthusiasm and best practices.  There were 90 applicants for her position, so she must have distinguished herself to get the job.  Interestingly she is a graduate of SPU - my colleagues were among her teachers.  

Here is Jordan moving his name from the "absent" to the "present" column, which each kid does every day upon entering the classroom.

And here's the classroom.  You can see Jordan near the middle in a white shirt.  His class meets in one of the "portables," which is small and doesn't have running water.  But then his class only has 18 kids.  That's a gigantic difference from the 27 in a typical class, and a big reason we wanted to get him into the Spectrum program.

First grade is overwhelmingly about reading, writing, and math.  Science and social studies share a one-hour slot at the end of the day... a big step down from Jordan's kindergarten, which had a carnivorous plant bog and a cactus garden and a teacher with a grant to do oceanography with the kids.  On the bright side, Jordan loves math, and his reading and writing skills are ramping up quickly.  Here's his photo and drawings introducing himself - there's one for each kid, and they take up most of one wall:

It says, "I LiCE PlAAinG on tHE PlAGrAOwnD."  In case you are not up-to-date on literacy research, "invented" or "best-guess" spelling is encouraged for first-graders as an appropriate developmental phase.  Kids who are taught to stop and spell everything properly don't get to write as much, and probably get anxious about it.  Just "doing your best" and not worrying about it is not only more enjoyable for the kids, it's also more fun for me: I can almost always read what he writes, which is just so great, and  I get an interesting window on his understanding of phonetics.

Here is another example, from his math homework this morning.  The instructions (which he read!) were to do a "thermometer hunt" (find a variety of thermometers in your house), then draw and label them.  We found a lot of thermometers:  the one with which we take his temperature, the one on the thermostat, the one on the back fence, the one in the fish tank, my meat thermometer, and another one that records the temperature at two different indoor locations (with a remote sensor).  I went and took a shower while he drew and labeled them.  I had no idea what he would do for labels, but he did not even pause:  sic, insid, wethr, fish, cishin, and haoos.  How cool is that, that he can express himself in writing actually rather clearly with no support at all?  

On the way to school, I said I thought it was very impressive how his spelling shows all the sounds, and we talked about all the great things you can do with writing.  Label stuff!  Make a sign!  Write a note!  Address a letter!  Write a story!  Fantastic.

Sukkot

I had not formerly thought of Sukkot as one of the High Holidays, but apparently it is.  This is the fun harvest-themed holiday, all physical labor and food and the kind of enjoyment that you are supposed to be especially prepared for after the spiritual cleansing of the Big Two.  Last year we had many adventures locating the proper materials and building our first sukkah.  This year was much simpler:  I preordered the lulav and etrog, and the sukkah was easy to rebuild (you leave the brackets on).  

We eat dinner in it whenever we get a chance.  The weather has been intermittent.

We did have some friends over for a fun and festive meal (note more challah).

A few days ago, Dale actually suggested to the boys that he and they sleep in the sukkah.  Of course they were thrilled.  He got them all set up, with the tent inside the sukkah for warmth.  Frankly I thought this was a very bad idea.  I was sure they would never go to sleep, would be too cold, whatever, and would come stumbling in exhausted and fighting at 11pm.  

Not so!  They did great, the moon was gigantic, and the whole thing was magical and I think very memorable.  I wound up being envious.  A few days later, I slept outside with them, but we were rained out.  (Rained in?)

It turns out there is a fairly entertaining history regarding the conditions under which one ought to sleep in the sukkah.  On the one hand, the instruction is to "dwell" in it; that means treat it like your home, including eating and sleeping in it.  On the other hand, one is excused from sleeping in the sukkah if it is going to make one at all uncomfortable.  For example, it might be too cold.  You might worry about being robbed.  You might find it inconvenient to shlep bedding to and from the sukkah every night.  You might be so disappointed to miss out on sleeping with your wife that you would be unable to enjoy the experience.  All  of these concerns were cited by 13th-17th century rabbis who didn't want to sleep in the sukkah.

A (Jewish) friend of mine who was resisting her (non-Jewish) husband's efforts to take the family camping this summer said, "Don't you know Jews don't camp?"  Apparently she's right.

High Holidays

The High Holidays have come and almost gone, the last of the cycle being Simchat Torah this Thursday.  We've had a great new year.  On Rosh Hashanah morning the boys attended an incredible two hours of adult services, with wonderful manners.  I think they wanted to see me read - I was on the bimah for the second half.  A peaceful place, the bimah.  Dale had his hands full back there in the stands but you couldn't tell from where I was.

(The reason I was enjoying such a big honor is that a few months ago the rabbi invited me to "help out with new members."  I agreed to pitch in; new members are a good zone for me, especially since they are often families with young kids.  Later I found out that he had been inviting me to chair the membership committee.  Still later I found out that there is no membership committee, that I will have to create one.  Um. This process is moving slowly.  The honor of a High Holidays reading is thus more about reinforcing my sense of obligation than about acknowledging anything I've actually done.)

This year we have had the novel experience of celebrating with other families!  In the past we have been mostly been en famille, and the closest famille in Maryland involved a long and harrowing rush-hour drive from Takoma Park to the north burbs of Baltimore.  But put your kids in a Jewish preschool and what do you know, you make Jewish friends.  Rosh Hashanah evening we had two families over (how is that twelve people already?) and had a delicious vegetarian meal involving fresh-baked challah and a wild mushroom galette.  We adults relaxed and enjoyed themselves to the exact extent that we were able to ignore the constant wild shrieking from the six loudly happy children.

On Yom Kippur, I mused on how detail-oriented the confession of sins is.  The traditional recitation has 44 sins, including, for example "sins we have committed with eye movements":  Did you look places you should not have looked?  Did you roll your eyes at anyone?  Did you narrow your eyes at someone?  The general mood seems to be that there are a hundred thousand opportunities every day to do well or badly, and we are responsible for all of them.  This seems particularly poignant for parents.  My favorite one is "sins we have committed through confusion of the heart."  The rabbis taught that all mistakes stem from a confusion of the heart; this is why we tap our chests as we recite the mistakes.  This seems like a very compassionate outlook.

I fasted this year, and Dale ate less than usual.  The general agreement among our friends seems to be that at most one parent can realistically fast - it's just too much to deal with preschoolers on no food.  I did well until we got stuck in Husky traffic on the way to break-the-fast at a friend's house, with fresh warm challah on my lap.  Torture.  When we finally arrived and ate the challah, though, I was hugely cheered up by my friend (also fasting) who said, awestruck:  "This is heaven.  And not just because I'm starving!"  I do make a delicious challah if I do say so myself.  Nana would be proud.

Irresistible pictures

These pictures aren't associated with any major trip or event but I just can't not post them.  How can we go another day, for example, without this astonishing image of Jordan, wearing a tiger balloon hat?

The tiger hat was made by the balloon man at a three-year-old's birthday party, and was one of a dozen similar creations.  He made a cow hat, a Thomas the Train hat, a snail, Spider-Man, you name it.  He told the kids he could make anything they wanted and they were thunderstruck at the very concept of that.

And here we have our children, outdoors in their pajamas (why?), on a sunny day months ago, discovering the delight of poofing water out an absurdly long tube.  The tubes have a seam that lets water from the swimming pool seep in between breaths, and something about the angle makes the water just super funny when it pops out.  They did this for a long time.  They look like didgeridoo players, or like something out of Dr. Seuss.  The tubes were originally part of a garden cloche thing.

Next we have the children posing together at a playground, so that I could take a picture and email it to Daddy who was out of town.

And finally we have a selection of Lego creations.  Jordan is a master:  his best works are extremely elaborate, and all are exactly symmetric, with specific intentional deviations for antennas and the like.  (Aaron contributed to this collection also... he is equally enthusiastic and his fine motor skills are coming right along.)  Jordan is so amazing at this that we thought he would love Engineering with Legos, but he was not into it.  "You only get to build what they say," he complained.  At home, everything is ships with guns.  Can't help that.  

Aunt Kari Camp

This is out of order, because Aunt Kari Camp was last month, but whatever.  Aunt Kari Camp was a whole week in which Dale's sister took the older boys (her kids and Jordan, but not Aaron) on various adventures all day every day.  They did a three-day camping trip at Mount Rainier that included a six-mile mountain hike.  They went to Northwest Trek, the Evergreen State Fair, and the Space Needle.  They got treats and souvenirs and generally had a blast.  I hope they do it every year.  Here are just a couple pictures:

Olympic Peninsula: Mountains

We went up to Hurricane Ridge for a day to see the mountains.  No hurricanes; in fact, if you can believe it, the weather was absolutely fantastic for our entire trip.  It didn't rain on us one bit the whole time, right up until the day we left.  How do you visit the rainforest and not get rained on?  It was disorienting.  We had brought raincoats, umbrellas, extra shoes, the works, and they were just piled around in the minivan being dry.

But I digress.  The mountains were gorgeous.  This whole post is really just an excuse to show this picture:  click on it to make it bigger for full drama:

I have almost nothing to say after that.  We had snacks.

We took a hike.  We didn't hike long because it was hot and steep and - sorry to say this - actually a little monotonous, once you were done gawking at the view.  A bear-went-over-the-mountain kind of hike if you  know what I mean.   

The boys love to pose together.

We learned an extremely useful fact on this trip: We hike at one mile per hour on easy to moderate trails.  (Challenging trails we do not attempt at all.)  Young preschoolers are often either dawdlers or dashers, and Aaron is very much the former.  He is also too big to be carried for more than a few minutes.  Thus we know our pace and accept it.  Zippy young adults hike easy trails at three or four miles an hour, so we had to be careful when other people referred us to "short hikes" in the area.

We also take frequent breaks for food, water, and trying on antlers.

Olympic Peninsula: Beach, river, dam

When I was in college Rialto Beach was one of the most powerfully significant natural places in the world to me.  It's awesome:  explosive crashing waves, gargantuan rock formations out past the tide pools, huge beach logs piled violently on top of each other.  Calling it a "beach" almost feels misleading -- there is little sand, it's not warm, and overall there is no invitation to relax.  On the contrary, it's downright dangerous.  But it's beautiful, and the ruggedness just increased my respect for and immersion in the place.  I remember sitting on the beach for an hour once just letting the noise of the waves pound my ears.

On this trip I sadly had to admit that the ruggedness was perhaps just plain harsh.  Back in the day, I hardly noticed the howling wind and freezing cold - at least I don't remember minding it; and clambering over the beach logs and stumbling through the irregular rocks, I think I just took that for granted.  Visiting the beach as part of a family whose members' ages span 67 years, now, that brought the wind and the cold and the potential for breaking your neck quite vividly to the front of the experience.  We didn't stay long.

Jordan loved it, and would have jumped all over the logs like a goat for half the day if he had had the option.

Aaron was much more troubled by the wind.  

I wish he had been troubled by the log-jumping too, but no, he wanted to go all over everything just like his big brother.  Aaron is all reckless delight, fearless, no interest in his physical limitations.  (Totally different from Jordan at the same age, who was cautious and respectful of possible danger.)  This was another reason we had to leave quickly.

We found ourselves some access to a flat, rocky riverbed, and spent a while there wading, rockhopping, and looking for little fish.  Actually the kids did that with Sue and Dale while Dad and I relaxed under a tree.

Later (was it even the same day?  I'm not sure, and I don't think it matters) we stopped by the Elwha Dam for a last look.  This is the "last dam summer" for the Elwha River; in an absolutely gigantic project, its two dams are being removed to free the river for salmon runs and general ecosystem rehabilitation.  It was fascinating to see the dam in person and imagine it not being there.  It's really big.  (UPDATE 9/13/10:  NPR had an excellent 4-minute story on this today.)  

The boys were mainly interested in the construction equipment.

Olympic Peninsula: Woods

We had another fantastic family vacation in a national park - this one much closer to home, the Olympic Peninsula.  One of the great things about the Peninsula is that there is temperate rainforest, rugged coastline, and high mountain peaks all within an hour or two of each other, so we had multiple ecologies in a single week!  We stayed at Sol Duc Hot Springs, which had duplex kitchen cabins and pools of various temperatures.  Jordan and I enjoyed discussing the two stories of why the hot springs are hot:  the myth, which is that the hot springs are the tears of a dragon, and the science story, which is that the water in the hot springs went next to an underground volcano before coming out of the ground.  Jordan said "A myth is an awesome story which is not true, and science is amazing because you can discover things that nobody knew before."  We agreed that both stories were excellent.

Sol Duc Lodge:

Cabin.  I was delighted to have a kitchen and brought a ton of food; I cooked for the whole family (the four of us plus Dad and Sue) the whole week and we took picnics for lunch.  We only ate out twice in six days.

Boys bouncing on the beds in the cabin.  

Picnic.  It was really good we had the picnic action going, as there was amazingly little for tourists to eat otherwise.

On to the woods.  We loved the giant trees, the hanging mosses, the clear streams, and the general lushness of it all.

Best of all were the slugs, for which the boys were on constant watch.

Jordan loves posing in dramatic locations and frequently asked to be photographed.

He is trying to teach Aaron to look at the camera; he does this by putting his hand on Aaron's head and physically swiveling it toward the photographer.

Dale was a whiz with the timer function, so there are even several pictures of all of us!

UPDATE:  Found a couple more photos on my phone.  Here we are eating lunch the way we did pretty much every day: