Box houses, Junie B. Jones, and Counting, Always Counting

Albert found a big box yesterday (we are surrounded by them in every room) and decided to make himself a house out of it. He got out a pair of scissors and some duct tape and proceeded to cut out a door and a window, tape the top shut, and add other decorative pieces. It was quite an enterprise, and he was completely absorbed for a good hour. It was fun watching him work.

Louise woke up this morning and got into bed with us and said she could count backwards from 30 to 1. I asked her to do it, and she did. Then she said she could do it from 40 or 50 or even 100. I said do it from 100, and she did that too. I asked her about the Junie B. Jones book she had started last night ("JBJ is almost a flower girl") and she said she finished it, and then told me about it. I think it's very cool that she's reading whole books to herself.

Katherine was sitting on the sofa looking at books with Albert, counting some things, and her counting maybe gets up to 4 or 5 on a good day. So I heard her asking Albert to teach her how to count past there. It was very cute.

The Weight of a Mouse--The Age of a Tree

Today Albert got this idea that he could weigh his mice. So he brought them down one at a time and put them on our scale. And then he wrote down how much each one weighed. All of a sudden he was totally engaged. But his numbers were not very good, so after he finished, I suggested he practice writing some numbers, and surprisingly, he agreed. I wrote the numbers across the top and showed him how to make each one, and he copied them all three or four times, VERY carefully, and really very well.

Then we decided to go out for a walk to collect autum leaves for some new placemats. Albert saw a big stump and decided to climb up on top of it. I asked him if he could count the rings and he was totally interested in doing it. He sat there for awhile counting up the rings (there were 89) and I told him that that tree must have been born the same year as Grandma Estelle. He thought about that for awhile. And then he wrote down 89 (VERY well) on a piece of paper I found in my pocket. And then he went off to find other stumps to see how old they were. It was really fun.