School news

Asher was working on a math problem today.  He ended up needing the product of 9 x 16.  Since I suspected he didn't know that one rapidly, I reminded him of doing 9 x (10+6).  "Remember, Ash?  Distribute the 9???'   I went on to remind him of what he'd seemed to understand seamlessly just a few weeks ago, and he became SO frustrated with me.  "I JUST DON'T GET THAT!!!"  So of course, mom goes to get something like pennies or beads to show how the distributive property works.  He is having none of this and has gotten quite impatient with me.  [I am a slow learner.  It pays to back off before this point!  This I have learned before!  Sigh.  Sometimes I get it right.]

Finally, he said, "Please SHUSH!" and I had by that time done so.  He sat quiet for a second and then says...

I know from [iphone game] that two 16's makes 32, so four 16's would make 64, so eight 16's would make 128.  Then I just add one more so the answer is 144.

Who needs the distributive property?  I will have to convince him with a harder problem :}

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Eden is moving on to level 2 of her reading program.  While she is not eager to read picture books to herself or anyone outside of our work-together time, watch out if she catches you while holding one of her three favorite National Geographic joke books!  I cannot believe what she manages to sound out when motivated to get a laugh from her victim!  I think this morning's shower was time enough to fit in at about 10 slow knock-knock jokes.  She's a hoot!  Now she makes up her own jokes too...quality may vary.

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Owen read Harry Potter vol. 5!  600+ pages.  This coming from our less-than-thrilled-to-read in general oldest is quite a feat.  Mom's sneaky plan to start with audio Cd's in the car and then stop them when they get too scary for the littler sibs had nothing to do with it, mwah, ha, ha!  Reuel and I were less than good parents for about a week while we polished off vol.'s 5-7 as well.  Now there are a whole lot of latin incantations floating around at any one time.  Chopsticks make great magic wands!  When we travel to England in May we're staying mere steps from the magical train platform at King's Cross so we'll have to stop for a picture :)