Milestone Minutiae

I decided to throw a low-stress "goblin dinner" together today on Halloween. I bought refrigerator crescent rolls, cut them into thin strips, and wrapped up hot dogs like mummies. I also made "witches fingers" - cheese pizza cut into thin strips with red bell pepper "nails" on one end. The kids were playing next door when I started cooking, so when Henry came through the door, I told him he'd just missed the goblins who had dropped by and given me some food for dinner along with instructions on how to finish making it. Emmett played along, saying he'd seen them and they were green with pointy ears and a little bit shorter than Henry. After dinner when I mentioned the goblins again, Henry said, "But there weren't really goblins, right?" I asked him, "Are goblins real?" and he said, "No." So I said, "So I have to be joking, right?" and he said, "Yes." I confirmed that I was, in fact, joking. He

We're using math books called "Life of Fred," in which the math is all introduced story style before kids are asked to learn how to do it. Today, the story introduced exponential growth and decay, teaching the kids how to create equations describing it. While going over his problems, I saw that Emmett was creating equations like (0.88)^x = 0.2. (This one was a problem about the value of a car decreasing 12% per year over time until it only had 20% of it's original value.) Emmett hasn't yet learned how to deal with variables in exponents, but after we talked about the equations, that was the first thing he asked. I'm guessing logarithms are coming right up, and Emmett can't wait because he wants to know  how to solve those problems he just set up! Just a little example of how masterful Stanley Schmidt has been in setting up these books. :)

Bedtime tonight - they ask, "What about dessert?!" I'm a little worried - we have *two* push-ups and there are *three* boys. I tell them, and Henry says he's willing to skip it. He is the one I always buy push-ups for, because he loves them. Then Emmett, who lately has been fighting like cats and dogs with Henrey says, "Henry can have it - I know he likes push ups more than I do. Can you just make me some vanilla milk?" OMG - the two of my kids who are most often trying to rip each other's throats out, willing to give up / have an alternate dessert for one another. Maybe something here is going right after all.