Chain Letters

I got a chain letter today from a friend of mine. It said that if I sent it to six of my friends, I’d be part of the biggest chain letter in the world and that Guinness would publish my name in their book. It sounded fun, but I didn’t really feel like copying over the letter that many times. When I asked my Mom if I could use the photocopier, she looked up the chain letter on her computer. It said Guinness doesn’t give records for chain letters. I wrote my friend a letter telling him. I hope he wasn't disappointed.

Tracking

Tonight just before dinner when I looked out the back door, there was a light covering of snow. Way back at the end of the field, there was a family of deer that we'd been watching most of the fall, silhouetted against the snow. I was dying to go out and check the tracks and see if we could see what else had been in the field, but nobody wanted to go with me. I think sometimes I get so gung-ho about something that I take up all the energy and make it hard for the kids to collaborate. I have to learn to back off and let them take the lead. And then track them...

In a mathematical way

Yesterday morning, Louise jumped in my bed and asked me how many days til Christmas. Usually, I'm wont to turn it into math practice, but I felt indulgent, so I just said “twelve” but before I had even got the word out of my math, Louise said “tell me in a mathematical way” (which means I should say something like “well, Christmas is the 25th and today is the 13th, so...”). In fact, it was the third or fourth time she had asked me that in the last few days, it kind of surprises me since she often gets mad when I answer in a mathematical way. Or maybe she just used to and now she likes it.

Anyway, this morning, we were talking about getting two futons delivered, and I said I thought it would cost around $35, and she said “so that would be $70 for the two of them” and again she surprised me because she hasn’t wanted to carry in her head, and then she said, “you know how I did it? 30 and 30 are 60, and then the two fives are 10, so that’s 70”. I was totally psyched. Maybe it is time for some pig-out and some cosmic wimpout, and maybe even monopoly...

And no, they don't charge a delivery fee for each futon.

Chew marks of a ?

Last week, we saw curious chew marks on some pumpkins that had stayed just a few too many days on our porch. We examined them, and made hyphotheses about their owners. Yesterday, Louise caught the culprit on film:

High Standards

Louise got a letter from her grandparents the other day and they asked her to write. A couple of days went by and I suggested it a few times. Finally, I got her to sit down with paper in front of her. But the writing totally stymies her. She hates not spelling exactly right, even though what she writes is certainly intelligible. Other times, I've tried taking dictation, but it's way too fun (and powerful) for her to watch me type as she speaks, and she adds all sorts of silly "ahems" and things. I've also tried helping her spell as she goes along, but this is worse, and completely distracts her from what she wants to say.

This time, I begged her to just write her own way, assuring her that they would understand. She did not like that idea. And while I wanted to suggest that she copy it over again, once I had corrected her spelling errors, I did not. Instead, I offered to copy it over myself. I was blown away by her answer: yes, I could copy it over for her, but she wanted to write it out again in her own handwriting. And she did. Score one for trusting your kids' standards.

Lots of reading

We finally finished painting Louise's bookshelves, which meant that we could take her bookshelves into Albert and Katherine's room. Along with the shelves came a copy of My Father's Dragon, which I showed to Albert and quietly suggested he might be interested in. A few minutes later, he brought it to me and told me he wanted to read it.

And he loved it. All three listened and begged for one more chapter each time we finished the last. Albert hadn't been so interested in a chapter book since we read Winnie the Pooh. We finished the first book and half of the second before I got tired. Then Albert said he'd read a little bit to Katherine, and they both got into his bed, which they both agreed was perfect for two kids, and he read her a whole chapter from Frog and Toad and then Wheels on the Bus as well. It was pretty cute. It was the first time in a long time that I felt motivated to get out the video camera.

Louise, for her part, was snuggled up in her own bed, finishing her first Magic Tree House (Buffalos before Breakfast, I believe), and then later when I checked on her, I saw she was finishing another Junie B Jones (Cheater Pants).

Playing the piano

It occurred to me last night that I haven't written anything about Albert and the piano. But really, it’s remarkable all that he's been doing. Every so often, he wonders by the piano and then sits down and starts to play. While it’s true that this is often when Louise is playing, it’s definitely not just about bugging her, but rather I think because her playing simply reminds him that he wants to play too.

Anyway, he sits down and generally starts to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy (from the Ninth Symphony). Last year sometime I had written down the notes (in numbers) for Louise and she had learned to play most of it, and we also listen to the actual orchestral version on the iPod relatively frequently. But Albert picked it out on the piano himself. Nobody told him the notes, and indeed if I try to help, he immediately gets mad at me and clearly wants me to stop. There was a time when he was skipping some of the sections that repeat or half-repeat, and it was bugging me (not a lot, just that I’d be listening absent-mindedly and then would notice when the song didn't go where I expected it to), so I tried to teach him how to do the repeats. The first couple of times he got annoyed, and I quickly went away, but then I noticed he went back later and figured out how to do it himself.

Now that he's gotten more bored with Ode to Joy he plays it in speed-style. And he plays it all over the piano. That is, he plays it in every possible octave, and he has discovered that you don't have to play it starting on E, but that he can start on B just as well. And on every B on the piano. And that it doesn’t work starting from other notes. Then he started trying to figure out “Do your ears hang low?” I'm not sure exactly why this song, perhaps there’s a bit of it that he just happened upon, and now he’s figured out the rest.

Currently he’s working on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I started playing it one day and he was watching and quickly picked up the first bit (which is a lot of repeating one note) and then started picking out the rest. Louise tries to teach him the things she’s learning in their piano lesson, and he gets them very quickly, though he resists using both hands (like me...)

It’s curious how little he wants us to intervene and yet how we can offer bits of help if they are small enough and well-timed. I love seeing him explore all the notes, but I try hard to hold back. Yesterday when he was explaining how you can start Ode to Joy on the “white key that’s above the two black ones or also the white key that’s above the three black ones” I casually mentioned their names and he quickly incorporated them into his vocabulary. But I’m sure any more information than that would have been unwelcome, to say the least.