Month: May 2016

Judge Not

Posted on by Melissa

Most judgement of others comes from lack of information. I’d like to share why I have ‘that kid’ at the grocery store.

Although my son just turned eight, he often sits in the shopping cart and…brace yourself for it…plays on his tablet. Yep, we do that. People stare, shoot me dirty looks and occasionally make comments. You too, may even have rolled your eyes. I get it.

Here’s the why. I don’t have a village raising my son. I have me. If we need food, then he has to come with me to the store to get it. He hates it! It’s a ‘have to,’ so not enjoyable for him.

We also have a limited budget, so I need to be able to concentrate on my list and get the things we came for without him being distracted and overstimulated by all that’s going on around him. When he gets anxious, I get anxious. If he is quiet and content doing his thing, then my mind is where it needs to be in that moment.

Finally, I feel it’s important to make healthy choices for what B and I eat. It’s much easier to do that when I’m the one making the choices. There is no, “I want that, I want this” happening. I ask for his input on flavors or have him pick out his breakfast cereals. He enjoys organizing the cart as I hand him things and he builds a fort around himself. He’s happy and I’m happy and we leave the store with healthy foods. This is a win in my book, regardless of what the other people at the store think.

Math Adventures

Posted on by Melissa

We have been loving a book series for a while and I wanted to share it with all of you. The Sir Cumference books by Cindy Neuschwander are phenomenal and no one is paying me to say so. I discovered our library system has all of them so we checked them all out. B asked me if I had bought them so that we could keep them forever and that is a glowing endorsement!

Each book is a typical 32 page children’s book with colorful illustrations by Wayne Geehan. The stories are usually some sort of adventure that the characters have. Different math concepts are introduced in each book, from a range of typical school grade ranges. Even as an unschooler, I still look occasionally to see what grade B would have been covering a certain topic that he already understands. It’s funny to me when I discover it would’ve been three years from now. But, I digress.

These books present the information as part of the story and that lends well to my son’s learning style. Didactic, teaching type books, rarely appeal so I was thrilled with these. I get asked to read them again and again. That helps solidify these concepts and I don’t mind because the stories are fun too.

The names of concepts get brought into the stories in the best ways. So memorable when you have characters named Sir Cumference, Radius, and Vertex as well as places like the Mountains of Obtuse. Brilliant! The play on words that occur in these books are such a wonderful literary hook for my new reader. He is loving all the language play he can wrap his mind around. I’m in love with seeing it unfold too. Seems like not long ago, I was worried that it wouldn’t happen. Great books help for sure.

B noticed that these books are a sort of series, but that they aren’t numbered like his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. So, that evening I showed him how you can find the copyright in a book and we put them in order that way. The learning never ends.

The books are;

Some math concepts that they include, are; diameter, radius and circumference in the first book, Pi in the second, angle measurement and acute and obtuse in the third, three dimensional shapes in the fourth, area and perimeter in the fifth, place value in the sixth, map use with x and y axes in the seventh, pie charts and bar graphs in the eighth and rounding in the ninth. So, they’re helpful resources to add to your collection or to borrow from the library and enjoy for as long as you can. Enjoy!