Math

A nice big box arrived from Singapore Math today in the middle of dinner. Instantly, dinner was devoured, dishes cleared, and children's hands tearing at the box. But I did convince them to go for a swim first while it was still nice out! So after swimming, we took out the books and distributed them. Raizel was so excited to get her Earlybird Kindergarten books, Eli his 1A books, and Amirah the books that she'll need by September (2A/2B). We spent the rest of the evening happily doing math. It wasn't even too terribly crazy with all three needing help at the table. They were so excited, especially Raizel who was finally doing math with the Big Kids.

We haven't done much learning time in recent weeks, and I've really missed the regularity and excitement of our learning time. I've discovered that trying to do half-days of camp (at our synagogue) followed by half-days of learning time doesn't really work so well. It's hard to change gears from summer fun and playing with friends to learning time. It's much easier to go the other way! So... no learning now, but the next three weeks will be camp-less so we'll dive in to finish up a few things and maybe get a head start on some new things.

We've had fun with readalouds lately. The subsequent Boxcar Children books we've read have been MUCH better than the one I initially referred to, B"H! We've enjoyed tearing through those, and it's been especially fun to see Eli's narration skills increase quite a lot. Tonight we started reading Thomas Mallory's The Boy's King Arthur, first published in 1880. This was a big hit, despite the very different language used at times. I did substitute some words for clarity! They followed the story just fine.

For science, we've been setting up a hermit crab habitat and now that the habitat is ready and has the right humidity and temperature, we're ready for three little creatures to move in. We went to the aquarium place near our house, but it turns out they are closed on Mondays. :( Disappointed, we came home and had lunch and went to Miri's annual doctor exam. Then on a whim we zoomed up to a place that was about 25 minutes away. Alas, they only had the extra-fancy painted shell hermit crabs and we wanted the plain kind. But they did have small snails and we wanted a couple for Amirah's goldfish bowl, so we got those set aside for us while we looked at all the other amazing creatures. When we were getting ready to leave the man said there was no charge for the snails (!) and wished us a good day. Amirah's eyes got big and round and happily shouted out a big THANK YOU! She was obviously so touched that he wasn't going to take money for them. It was very sweet, and he was indeed a very nice man. A fun experience. Hopefully, the local store will have hermit crabs available tomorrow. If not, we'll mail order them. :)

A good week, as usual, and the house is moving along! We will submit our small repair list tomorrow, and hopefully they will take care of it. Closing is scheduled for five weeks from tomorrow! Still seems surreal...

Off (almost) to bed...