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Powered by LifeType4/10 - Noah comes up to me, winking, and says, "Mommy, me one eye!" It was hilarious. (I couldn't wink until first grade.)
4/11 - Guess which story this is, by Noah: "Let me in. No, no, no. Blow up house!"
4/20 - What does Noah say when the smoke detector goes off? "Timer!"
Faith has a neat pincer grasp and feeds herself finger food easily.
4/14 - Faith is starting to pull herself up onto furniture. The problem is, she can't get back down without falling.
I have moved her on to 12-month size clothes, and her legs still stick out. She's going to be tall!
Jonathan has been reading more and more. He's gotten some Step Into Reading: Step 1 books from Grandma and borrowed some from a friend, and he loves it! 4/17 - He called to me from the other room, "What's that crazy word again? The one with the 'k'? Right. 'Now he knows...'." I hadn't realized before watching Jonathan read this that a "silent k" turns the present into information.
We borrowed WALL-E from a friend a few weeks ago, and the boys love playing "WALL-E and Eva". Today, Jonathan made a WALL-E costume out of a cardboard box without any help. He made a cube of trash out of Duplos, and asked me to make a little paper cockroach for him. He can fold himself all up in it, but then his arms and head come out of the sides and top when he's ready to work again. There's a little flap in the front for his trash compactor. He labeled it with his warning light and power meter, and a nice WALL-E on the flap. Look for pictures and video on the pictures page later.
The Three Little Pigs!
The girls loved WALL-E too. They laughed and laughed hysterically for the entire first half. After seeing Jonathan's forts on Sat. I can totally envision him making a WALL-E costume!
Grandma is correct, The Three Little Pigs.
I forgot to mention we also made a little plant out of Duplos and stuck it in Noah's cowboy boot.
Pictures are up!
First Jonathan beats Heather in chess, now Noah beats Grandma with Rubik's Cube.
Jonathan's math test is awesome!!! What's the grid in the lower right?
I love the look on Jonathan's face when he reads "garden."
Great Wall-E!
The grid is a Sudoku puzzle that Jonathan made for Daddy to solve. But a 12x11 Sudoku is pretty tricky, so Daddy didn't get very far.
The math test was pretty fun. I had the honor of administering Will's first standardized test, and after that both Jonathan and Noah clamored for tests of their own to take. The only part Jonathan missed the first time was noticing that 1,582 was even.
Ah, youthful innocence! Jonathan and Noah still know what tests really are: fun puzzles on which to try one's own strengths and sharpen one's abilities. It is the way that tests are used against us that destroys their true purpose.
Some people thrive under pressure, but for most of us, I think, it destroys creating thinking. Richard Feynman discovered that -- when he felt pressure (real or imagined) to produce ideas, he could not. Only when he released himself from the expectations of others and returned to "playing" did he discover that for which he later earned the Nobel Prize.
I've seen it in myself, too. I love puzzles! But when faced with one I find particularly difficult -- especially if it is a form or type of puzzle that is new to me -- I must often consciously and firmly tell myself that the purpose is fun, no one is grading me, no one is judging me, and it doesn't matter if someone, or everyone, else finds it easy and solves it quickly. If I let myself play with the puzzle, rather than feeling that I must solve it, I make much more progress.
I've never solved a Rubik's cube in my life, so you can take a guess as to what impressed me most...
I haven't solved Rubik's Cube, either. Clearly, I need to give myself time to play with it under no pressure, as Noah's doing. It helps, I'm sure, to have a daddy around who can start it afresh for you when needed. :)
I was not interested in the Rubik's Cube when Jon started looking up how to solve it. However, I got hooked the moment I realized that each face is not independent of the others. Each mini cube is the same no matter where you put it. The centers are always in the center, at the same orientation, there is always a red-blue-yellow corner, etc. Once you start thinking of it as a whole and not six independent faces the logic begins to emerge.
And yes, it's very nice to have someone who can solve it in under five minutes in case you get in a jam.
Last night we were playing with John Kuhns' new timer. Both Nate and Jonathan solved it from "centers" in ten seconds. I'll have to get a video of that, too. (and don't ask me to describe centers, a picture will do better.)
Note that Noah can't solve it from anything more mixed up than what you see on the video. I talked Jonathan through solving it all the way through, though he effectively skipped the hard parts, by having me tell him exactly what to do on those parts.
There are a couple interesting patterns (like the "centers" that Heather refers to) that can make a cube look fairly mixed up, and Jonathan can solve it, it looks particularly neat on the 5x5 cube.
(and we'll have to bring the cubes to the MaggieP this year... There isn't a Harry Potter book for everyone to read, so we'll have to find something...)
You could bring that other cool puzzle, too, the one that drives everyone else in the room nuts because you can't turn it off until blessed relief comes with "Powering down...." :)