the sleppys

Tropical Storm Ernest is heading in our general direction… is it a hurricane yet? Well, anyway, yesterday morning, I piled the kids into the car to fill up on gas. As we waited in the traffic jams, Ty was getting impatient because we all know that “green means go, folks,” but he didn’t realize that cars were not moving due to the gas lines. I started talking about the storm and people need to get ready and sometimes people panic so we have to be patient and stores are going to be closed for a few days afterward so we have to prepare and we all have to be nice to each other because we’re all in the same boat together…
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” said Ty with his palm in the air facing me. “You’re making too much noise, Mommy.”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yes.”

Well, like I said, we all have to be patient because people panic… in the weirdest ways. Some people scream. Others babble… on and on.

Last year, I was talking to a four-year-old boy about how school was going.
“We do math,” he said.
“Oh, yea? Do you like math?”
“Yes, but it’s really hard sometimes. Like, we do this thing called ‘addition.’ Do you know about that?”
“Yes, I know a little bit.”
“Isn’t it hard?”
I smiled. “Sometimes it can be, yes.”

Well, I’m not teaching my kids written addition just yet, but Ty and I were adding plastic rings. There were 40 rings, ten of each color: red, blue, green, and yellow. I just piled them to one side, then I put down two blue rings in front of Ty.
“Two”
“Two,” he repeated. By the way, he knows how to count.
“Plus one,” I said as I put down one green ring, “equals…”
“Three!”
“Yes!”
And we tried several other combinations of adding two digits under five, which he got all correct. ALL. After about 15 minutes, he became interested in making chains with these plastic rings. That’s fine. No pressure. Just introducing the terms “plus” and “equals.”

I’m interested in incorporating more mathematics in our homeschool. We have shapes and counting, but that’s as far as we’ve gotten. Maybe we can do some patterns projects for our autumn crafts. There’s a great book series by Stuart J. Murphy called MathStart (published by HarperCollins). Sorting, probability, opposites, capacity, comparing sizes and weights, directions, et cetera are addressed in the form of picture books. Awesome stuff. We’ve already borrowed Leaping Lizards from our public library. Ty counts by 5s and 10s, with some help. But he totally gets the idea.

Ty is learning the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet. He caught on rather quickly. On Saturday, I went through the alphabet one time, guiding him with his finger motions. The next day, he tried it by himself and made it through “K.”
We went to the library and picked up some ASL books for kids. He now takes the book off the shelf and teaches himself. “That’s the point,” says Dad. I’m just so amazed. He speaks his routine and signs at the same time. We’re not using correct syntax yet, but his signing is clear. He knows and uses the signs for:
eat/food
home
sleep
old
sun
rain
Ty (”T” with long hair)
Kyle (”K” with long hair)
Taylor (”T” with curly hair)
Dad
Mom
shower

It’s good to know a uniform sign language such as ASL when one needs to be quiet… such as in the library or when people are sleeping or thinking or watching TV. I love informal schooling.