August 2009 photos

August 2009

Math Resources mentioned in the Teenage Liberation Handbook

Logic books by Raymond Smullyan.
Anno's Math Games (I, II, and III), Mitsumasa Anno.
Mathematics: the Language of Science, George O. Smith.
The I Hate Mathematics! Book, Marilyn Burns. (I don't have fond memories of this one)
The Joy of Mathematics, Theoni Pappas.
The Mathematical Tourist: Snapshots of Modern Mathematics, Ivars Peterson.
Mathematics Made Difficult, Carl E. Linderholm.
Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Overcoming Math Anxiety, Sheila Tobias.
Mind Over Math, Stanley Kogelman and Joseph Warren.

All the Math You'll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide, Steve Slavin.

It is possible to learn math without ever opening a math textbook.

Quote for the Commonplace Blog

Instead of saying... Try..
"I like the way you..."
saying nothing (and just paying attention)
"Good drawing! I love those pictures!"
describing, rather than evaluating, what you see: "Hey, there's something new on the feet of those people you just drew. They've got toes."
"You're such a great helper!"
explaining the effects of the child's action on other people: "You set the table! Boy, that makes things a lot easier on me while I'm cooking."
"That was a great essay you wrote"
inviting reflection: "How did you come up with that way of grabbing the reader's attention right at the beginning?"
"Good sharing, Michael."
asking, rather than judging: "What made you decide to give some of your brownie to Dierdre when you didn't have to?"
- Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting, p. 157

Adults in the workplace, meanwhile, are most likely to burn out not because they have too much to do but because they don't have enough choice about what it is they're doing.
- Ibid, p. 168

Playing With Food

We were eating leftover black bean and rice soup, chicken, and zucchini for dinner. Faelan fed some soup to his little wooden bus driver: "Driver eat it! Oh no! On table! Driver lick it!" Then he pointed to a little curl sticking up out of a big piece of chicken: "Oh no! Crying baby! Crying baby!"
"Oh, that chicken is a crying baby? Why is the baby crying?"
"Milk!"
"He needs milk?"
"Yeah!" So another piece of chicken comes and give the baby milk. "Crying baby!"
"Now what does the baby need?"
"Chicken!" So we feed the baby some chicken. (Cannibalism! Ew!) Faelan points to another piece of chicken. "Crying daddy! Crying daddy!"
"Oh really? Why is the chicken daddy crying?"
"Milk!"
"Do daddies drink milk?"
"Yeah!"
"...mommy milk?"
"Yeah!"
"Really? Oookay." So a third piece of chicken gives the daddy chicken some ... chicken milk? I seem to recall that some of the chicken family also ate zucchini, but my recollection is becoming confused.

"Do you want to take a shower?"

"No, take a bathtub."

In the bath:
"What are you doing?"
"Drinking water out faucet."

Tyranny of the Telephone

The phone rang while Faelan was napping, and he woke up to say "Ringing." He blinked a couple of times, then said, "phone." He half sat up. "Mommy talk!" Then he fell back to sleep.

Half an hour later, it rang again, and this time he opened his eyes and shouted "Oh no! Oh no! Phone ringing! Mommy phone!" (Meaning my cell phone.)
"Should I answer it?" I asked.
"Yeah!" he said sleepily, with a look of relief.
"How about some more milk?" I asked, hoping that he would drift off to sleep again. He burst into tears and mumbled something about being carried. "Do you want me to carry you to answer the phone?" Tearfully, he nodded, so away we went. Then he was fine.

Verb Conjugation!

Last night, we were playing catch with Francis and Mariko. Faelan yelled "I get it!" when the ball rolled under the furniture. When we tried to help him, he said impatiently, "I got it." Later, taking the cart home, he was having some trouble rearranging things so he could push instead of pull, and one of us offered to hold it for him meanwhile, but he said, "I getting it."

Oh, this is fun.

Blueberries

"Mommy eat it," Faelan says, putting the blueberry to my lips. When I open my mouth to eat it, he snatches it away and eats it himself, laughing mightily. This happens ten times, then I snap one up. This is hilarious. He tries again, I try again, but he now clamps down on the berry so I can't get it, and back it goes to his mouth. Once I do get one, and his fingers go in to get it back. Faelan 3, Mommy 1.

More talking

Francis made a pasta sauce with ground bison for supper tonight. As she was eating it, she said to her lodger, Mariko, "I like the meat." Faelan, eyes still on his fistful of pasta, said thoughtfully, "Like the meat too."

We checked out a library book called "Our Cat Henry Comes to the Swings." Faelan requests it by saying, "Cat coming swing."

Leaning a pair of walking sticks against a desk in front of a laptop: "Together, leaning 'puter."

Ha! Whenever we ask where someone in a book might be going, the answer is "Playground!" (sounds like gaygown)

He also likes "Help Mommy clean laundry."

Photos July 2009

July 2009

Pronunciation

Maytoto - tomato
Checaca - Jessica
Keeneenee - Zucchini
Sihtehter - Sisters

Cumumber - Cucumber

Gaygown - Playground

Um one - Another one / other one