Author - Lorri

In Praise of Math-U-See

starterblockslarge.jpgI love Math-U-See! Why didn’t anyone tell me about it earlier? Oh wait, someone did. But most importantly, Boo loves Math-U-See. A recent writing assignment had him listing his favorite school subjects and in the number one position he put Math-U-See (MUS). I asked him what he liked about it and he said that “it’s got blocks to work with and a nice DVD.” High praise indeed from my math-impaired boy. And if you have a child that struggles in math like Boo, then you know how happy this all makes me.

Let’s talk a little more about MUS. First, that “nice DVD.” What child doesn’t love a good DVD? And Mr. Demme is funny and nice and he knows how kids think. He keeps the lessons short and easy which makes everyone happy. I do some additional teaching to reinforce the concepts, using those fun blocks. Then Boo gets busy with his workbook and blocks. He works aloud so that I can see that he gets what he’s doing and not just faking his way through. The worksheets are also quick and to the point and include multiple variations of the concept, including word problems. When I think Boo is ready , he takes a test on the subject and if he passes, he moves on. We stay on a single subject as long as we need to, whether its a day or a week. If you need more worksheets, they are available on the website.

So let me tell you about Boo’s math progress. We’re still keeping up with Horizons Math. He understands what he’s working on and is able to continue to make progress, but we need to go back and learn those math facts. I look at it like earthquake retro-fitting. His foundation is shaky, but there is no need to tear down the house. With a good, strong foundation, his math house won’t come falling down. That’s where MUS is helping.

In a few short weeks, he’s gone from needing to use his fingers to add, which is really counting, not adding, to knowing a good deal of his addition facts. He actually knows his +9s! No finger counting at all! And he doesn’t know the facts by rote, either. He can actually explain to you just why 9+7=16. You know, how 9 really wants to be 10, so it grabs a unit from the 7 and turns the math problem into 10 +6. Let me say it again, The Boy is learning his math facts.

Let me just take a moment and revel in that.

cimg2407.JPGIn the meantime, Pumpkin Girl, who does just fine in math, has been quietly watching the DVD and listening in on the lessons. She often stands next to Boo while I help him with the blocks. Just the other day she was finished with her schoolwork and Boo was working on his dictation for the day. Pumpkin had asked to use our little white board and the MUS blocks were sitting on the table. I looked over to her and discovered that she was busy solving for x. She was quietly writing her own math problems like x+8=10 and solving them with the blocks.

Have I mentioned that I love Math-U-See?

Seasonal Delights

By way of a couple of blogs I read (sorry, I can’t remember which ones), I discovered a new online magazine, Seasonal Delights.  All I can say is wow!  Normally, I don’t care to read magazines, books or instructions on the computer.  It bugs me to have to keep scrolling and nothing beats sitting on the couch with a cup of chai or sweetened ice tea.  But Seasonal Delights is an easy exception!

Their premier issue is 18 pages long, which is long enough to provide Autumn themed crafts and recipes, but short enough to actually read and savor and not end up lost among all your other files saved on your computer.  Beautiful, full color pictures and a nice happy font that is easy on the eyes.  Which is important when you’ve left your reading glasses w-a-y over there with the school books.  Oh, and it’s specifically for “young ladies and their mothers,” so the projects are simple to do but still beautiful.

For the month of September, they are offering free one year subscriptions to their magazine, and you’ll also get access to their blog, which will have additional seasonal activities.

Go check ’em out and tell them you heard about them right here at the Mac and Cheese Chronicles.

Christmas is Coming

Christmas is coming
The goose is getting  fat
Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat

Yes dear friends, Christmas is coming.  With all the back to school, back to scouts, sports, and dance chaos, time is going to fly by and December will arrive before you know it.  Is all your shopping done?  Are all your presents wrapped and labeled and well hidden through out the house?  Are you Christmas cards addressed and stamped, because of course, you bought your cards at an end of season clearance sale last year?  Are your cookies baked and carefully frozen?  Are you Ready For Christmas?

Me neither.

But I’ve gotten a good start.  Our holiday season actually starts at the end of September, when the Halloween decorations come out, and then we get hit with 3 birthdays, our anniversary (#15 this year!), Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Throw in our cruise at the beginning of December, so if I don’t start planning now, I will totally lose my mind around mid-October.  It won’t be pretty.

My planning starts with gift ideas.  Somebody is getting something handmade this year, but I can’t tell you who.  That project is about halfway done.  I still need to think on the female members of my extended family.  But I think I’ve got the kids all figured out.

In our never ending battle against the toy room, we have decided to limit our children’s gifts to things that are 1) consumable, 2) very small, or 3) additions to play sets that they already have.  With that in mind, Pumpkin Girl is going to get some craft kits.  I’ve already bought a couple of beginning sewing projects and a scrapbook kit. Doll clothes are on the list, too.  Boo is getting a Lego Chess computer game, which can be stored in a binder with the rest of the CD-ROMS.  I’m also thinking about a magician’s hat and cape to go with last year’s magic set.  Boo’s Rescue Heroes and fire truck are being recycled into gifts for Bip.  Probably some new Thomas trains, too.

Pumpkin and Boo both want an Easy Bake Oven.  I’m not too sure about that one.  They’ll be 9 and 7 by the end of the year and I’m wondering how long this will hold its appeal for them.  They can pretty much just bake with me, but they might have lots of fun “baking” on their own.  They’ve been asking for it for almost a year now.  What do you think?

I’m going to try to have my Christmas shopping for the children done by the end of September.  That’ll include birthday shopping for the older ones, too.  This year I plan to print labels for our Christmas cards and have those done, early, too.  As for our cards, the Disney ship will be decorated for Christmas and we can get our formal portrait turned into Christmas cards before we even leave the ship.  So I won’t worry about that.

How about you?  Have you started any Christmas planning yet? Do you prefer to shop early or wait until the last minute?

Labor Day at the Air and Space Museum

We just started studying space travel and the planets. And here we are, living in DC, with none other than the National Air and Space Museum just down the street. Figuratively, of course.

We like to use national holidays to go visit the free museums on the Mall. Parking is free on holidays and if you get there by 9:30 or so, you can park right in front of your museum of choice.

apollo11.jpg We’d been studying the Apollo space program and the missions to the moon, so we were really happy to find the Apollo 11 command module right there in the main lobby of the museum. Boo and Pumpkin Girl were amazed at how small the space for the astronauts really was. Other exhibits showed us the development of the space program, from Mercury to Apollo 17. They enjoyed seeing the real pieces of the space suits we’d talked about and how the space shuttle crew had special contraptions to help them drink their sodas from cans. Bip enjoyed this rotating model of Mars:

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“Moon! Me! More moon! Wo-ow!”

d2.jpgWe also got a chance to see a small sampling of the National Museum of American History,which is closed for renovation. A few of the exhibits are at the Air and Space Museum, including the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz movie, Kermit the Frog, and the hat Lincolm was wearing when he was shot. The highlight of that gallery was when Bip spotted one of his favorites, R2D2. He was sitting in his stroller and couldn’t see him at first, but as soon as the crowd cleared and he spied him, he cried out, “D2!! Me!!” It really made his day.

We got off easy at the gift shop, with another key chain for Boo’s collection, another set of Presidential family paper dolls for Pumpkin Girl (she loves this series of paper dolls!), a couple of small toy planes, and of course, astronaut ice cream. Can’t forget the astronaut ice cream.

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Why I like to sit in the back

Jennifer at As Cozy As Spring tells us some tales from Mass and it reminded me of my own funny Mass Stories.

First, you’ll be happy to know that Bip and I have graduated from the crying room and have joined the family right up in the front row. This is my own personal purgatory for a childhood spent of thinking about anything but Mass, because like all good womb to tomb Catholics, I abhor the first row. The second row, maybe, but given my choice I’ll pick a nice row right in the middle. Never the first row.

But Philip lets the children pick where we sit, and they always head for the front where they can see best.

Like Jennifer’s daughter, Pumpkin Girl gets a subscription to Magnifikids so she can follow along with the Mass. When I’m able to, I peek over her shoulder so I can read along, too. I’m one of those people who learn best by reading and I got cut out of the loop when churches stopped providing Missalets. I have a hard time paying attention if my only option is to listen. At least from the front row I can’t count how many women have short hair versus how many have long hair.

Anyway, so Pumpkin gets her Magnifikids as we’re leaving for Mass. She and Boo argue every single time over who is going to get to read Brother Goodventure first. The solution is always the same, she reads it out loud while Boo looks on. We go through this every week. Every week people!!!

disneycrocs.jpgNow Bip, who is very busy being 2, has reached the Me Do It stage. Which means that very often he puts his Mickey Crocs on the wrong foot, with the strap facing forward, thus increasing the odds that one of his shoes is going to fall off. Sometimes we can convince him that we can help him and rotate that strap back behind his heel, other times not.

Now it just so happens that his foot, with croc on, is the exact same width as the space between two lowered kneelers. You know what’s coming, don’t you? He kept getting his foot caught between the kneelers and would yell out, “Aah! ‘tuck!” (stuck). And I’d reach down and pull his foot out. Leaving the croc behind of course, prompting him to yell, “Aah! Croc!” So I’d pull the croc out and try to put it on his foot, which caused him to yell, “ME!” Three different times we do this, “Aah! ‘tuck!,” “Aah! Croc!,” “ME!”. From the front row. Finally I leaned down and whispered to him, “Stop getting stuck.” And he looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said, ” tay” (okay). And he stayed unstuck for the rest of the Mass.

It’s a good thing he’s cute.

The Haircut

I got my hair cut today. It’s been awhile because finding a good stylist is so hard. Especially when you live on a military base located in what we’ll call one of the not so desirable DC neighborhoods. Let’s just say it’s no Georgetown and leave it at that. But recently a stay-at-home haircutting dad moved on base. His wife is active duty Air Force, he’s decided to homeschool this year and already he’s quite the hit with the ladies. He did a wonderful job with my hair, which is super thick and super straight. It’s been a while since I’ve had a hair cut worth talking about. In fact, my last great cut was the one in my old blog avatar picture. Like most things in my life, it has A Story. Do you want to hear it?

It was October 2004 and we were living in Korea. We were busy doing who knows what one afternoon when there was a knock on our door. It was an MP, telling us that we needed to get everyone out of the house and go across the street. Turns out that unexploded ordnance from the Korean War had been found in our neighbor’s backyard. Why they thought we’d be safe on the other side of our cul-de-sac is beyond me. But there we waited for further instruction. Then an explosive ordnance disposal team was going to be brought in from another base, which was about an hour away, so we needed to go away for awhile. They allowed us 15 minutes back into our houses to gather what we needed. I guess the possibility of being blown to bits was mitigated by the fact that none of us had our keys or wallets and many of the children weren’t wearing shoes.

Most of us ended up going to the Dragon Hill Lodge, a beautiful, resort style hotel on base. In many ways it was the social hub of the base. Its amenities included 3 restaurants, a bakery, tailor, tavern and a salon (I think we were actually sitting at that same table in the picture). As we were sitting in one of the lobbies, I was complaining about my hair, which at the time was straight down my back. My friend recommended I go to her girl, who worked right there at the salon. So we walked over and it turns out she was able to get me in that afternoon. And what else did I have going on that afternoon, besides wondering how long we were going to be stranded, how they were going to let us know it was safe to return and if there was even going to be anything to return to.

Turns out this girl (sorry, she was quite a bit younger than me) had trained with Vidal Sassoon in London and was the type of stylist who could look at your hair and your face shape and come up with a great cut. I loved what she did so much that I had Philip take my picture as soon as we got back home. Here it is…
Oh, and as for the rest of the story, one of our evacuated neighbors was also an MP and kept in contact with them so he was able to tell us when it was safe to return to our homes.

Isn’t that a funny story? Or do you all have unexploded ordnance in your backyards, too? I really don’t make this stuff up. You can read the for-real account of it here: Unexploded mortar shell… But as you read it, remember that I told you the true story, where we were just told to leave and no one told us where to go or how we’d know when to return. I guess someone decided in hindsight that we should have been taken to a central location and taken great care of and that’s the story they told the paper.

New Neighbors

We’re getting new neighbors.  We weren’t sure that we were, because for various and sundry reasons our housing area was “frozen” to new people moving in.  Then on Friday I spied two children playing in the backyard of the empty house next door.  I didn’t recognize them and I didn’t think it was a good idea for them to be playing where their parents, wherever they were, couldn’t see them.  Then they moved closer to the house and I couldn’t see them any longer and they stayed out of my view for a long time.  I started to wonder if maybe…

So I checked the front yard, and sure enough there was an unfamiliar minivan parked next door.  Woo hoo!

Then I tried to decide how to “run into” these people.  I could grab the mail key, watch for them to appear and casually step out for the mail.  Or I could pretend to weed my garden. But our normal August heat and humidity had returned so I opted for staking them out from my air conditioned house.

I didn’t have to wait long.  The children I had seen earlier wandered over to check out my children’s bikes.  I made my way to the front door and they saw me and ran away.  I opened my door anyway and saw the mom.  I waved and asked if they were moving in.  She said that no, they were still just looking.  I started talking to her, then my brood started clamoring to come out, so I let them.  Which led to more talking during which I found out that this family

1) has a 7 year old boy, a 5 year old girl, a toddler boy 1 month older than Bip and a new born

2) is Catholic (but not homeschoolers).

Yippee!  I pointed out the advantages of this house in particular, especially my own 8 year old boy, 6 year old girl and 2 year old toddler.  I mentioned that being on the end of the cul-de-sac made for a great place to ride bikes.  And that the yard already has a fence.

When they left, I was pretty sure they’d choose this house over any others they might have seen.

Sure enough, this morning, I heard children out front and spied their minivan backed up to the house while they unloaded some of their things.

It’s hard not to worry about things you have no control over, isn’t it?  Especially when it involves all your children’s friends moving away and being one of only 3 families living in a 6-plex.  But God is good and knows the desires of our hearts, even before we can speak them.

Behind the Living Room Couch

Is there no end to the places we have found to stash clutter?  At some point I think we stopped trying to hide it, and just tried to contain it to certain areas of the house.  That might help to explain this:

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To fully understand the scope of this particular area behind our living room couch, you need to know that the couch is located right smack in the middle of the room.  Imagine a long room, one end is your standard family room the other end is more of an office area.  The couch provides a physical divider between the two.  When you walk into the house, you look down a short hall, then directly  the living room and you see this mess.

This area has given us particular grief.  Most of the things stashed here are things we don’t know what to do with.  We want or need to keep them, it’s just a matter of where.  It took a long time to go through each box or bin, sorting, tossing and putting away.  Not every solution was the best, but we made it.  Another problem with this area was that its location made it very easy to add to.  It was a quick and easy place to stash whatever came into the house.  But it’s gone…

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And here’s the new view as you walk into my house:

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Ah, peace!

You can enjoy the rest of my attack against clutter here:  Corners Of My Home.

The Sales Pitch

Pumpkin Girl’s writing assignment today was to write a dialogue starting with “I wish I had a…”  Here’s what she wrote:

Pumpkin Girl: “I wish had a dog. Then I could play fetch with it.”

Mama: “That would be an idea.”

Pumpkin Girl:  “And I could also, for it’s birthday, give it maybe, a bone.”

Mama:  “Yes, that would be nice, just, a bone would be probably hard to find.”

Pumpkin Girl:  “Yes, I suppose so.  But with my dog, I could take it for walks.  I even have a dog book about them.”

Mama:  “I know that you have a dog book.  And you probably would take good care of it.  But we would have to leave it behind where ever we moved.”

Pumpkin Girl:  “Maybe when we stop moving, we could get a dog.”

 What’s she trying to say, exactly?

We’ve Got Winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered my Planner Give-Away, and double thanks to those who promoted the contest on their blogs!  An added benefit of this contest was that I found several blogs that were new to me and I’m looking forward to reading them regularly.

Enough talk.  Just in case you’re wondering, I used List Randomizer to help me choose the winners, and here they are.

Winner of Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer is Sheri.

Winner of the Catholic Woman’s Daily Planner is Carrie.

Congratulations, ladies!

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