fun with fractions

our approach to at-home learning is to follow cosmo's lead. when he shows interest in something, we offer supporting resources and encouragement. when his interest fades, or moves on to something else, so do we.

playing "allowance" first thing, on christmas day. sorting coins for Mother Hubbard's Cupboard

money seems to be a sustained interest for cosmo. he has been fond of coins since age 3. At 5 he had his first coin sorter. it didn't last 6 months, but he did get a new one for his 6th birthday. he now wants a coin counting jar, and will not let up about the "my little ATM" he once saw in a catalog. he enjoys coin collecting, especially series, like the state quarters and the national parks quarters. he has a susan b. anthony and a saquajwia dollar, a pouch full of various foreign coins, some fifty cent pieces and a buffalo nickel. he has learned the value of all the coins in circulation, and has learned how to make change, mostly through playing monopoly, life, and a game called allowance. he now gets an allowance, and has opened his own back account.

it was through his interest in money that he first became aware of fractions. i'm not sure exactly how this went, i think he was asking carl about half dollars, and quarters, and somehow the idea of 4ths came up. carl drew a quick pie chart to illustrate, and cosmo made a few on his own. he clearly grasped the concept. the next time we went to learning treasures, he asked for one of the fraction materials they have available. we compared the bar type, and the pie type, and settled on the pie ones, even though they don't have the fraction numbers printed on them.

he enjoyed them as objects from the moment we brought them home, as did the rest of the family.

a week or so later, the south carolina primary was happening, and carl and i, the political junkies that we are, were tuning in. since cosmo likes games and charts (and always wants to know who’s winning), we thought he might enjoy keeping track of the returns as they came in. i showed him a way that he could graph the percentages as the night went on, and we took a look at the latest polls online. i made a pie chart of those percentages while cosmo was building a lego pyramid. when he saw my pie chart, he wanted to make one too. i showed him how i made it using the fraction pieces, and tracing. i helped him figure out how to combine some of the pieces to make a certain percentage, and then i walked away to watch the primary coverage. 

later i noticed he had completed a chart, using a combination of numbers from the poll, and from the early returns. his chart is more vibrant and interesting to look at than mine, and he completely got the legend part.

his grasp of basic math concepts continues to amaze me. much like the way he started reading on his own before age 4, he seems to pick up math as if he were born knowing it (this was not the case for his mother, i assure you). he gets the basic idea of multiplication, and can do some on his own. last week he blew me away with how quickly he could calculate scrabble scores “okay, that’s 7, 9, 10… triple word score, so that’s 30 points.” his spelling is not quite good enough for full participation in scrabble, but he teams up with one of us, and keeps score. fun for the whole family!

blog action day: climate change*

i'll be frank: i think it's a lost cause. fighting climate change. too late. we've known about the greenhouse effect since i was a little kid--AT LEAST! the situation was dire THEN. drastic action had to be taken immediately to even hope to begin to reverse the trends. instead, it has only gotten worse. and will clearly continue to do so. a new study shows that much of the arctic ice cap will be melted in summer months-- within TEN YEARS, and that the arctic will be an open sea in the next 20-30 years!



so...? that is just the way it is. we are humans, we belong to this earth, we are creatures of this planet, and this is what we do. this is what we have done. if, as creatures of this planet, we take elements of the earth, and manipulate and use them in such a way that they make the earth unlivable for most of the beings that currently in habit it-- if we humans take actions that lead to the destruction of the environment, such that humans can no longer live on earth, so be it. the earth will go on without us, and the adapted ecosystem that evolves will be something else. something we don't get to know about.

it seems arrogant to me, to believe that it is all about us. or, all about our perspective. or, that we think we can control global climate change, or that we think the worst thing in the world would be the extinction of human beings. if we make our planet uninhabitable, then we cease to exist. and i hate to admit it, but i am kind-of okay with that. well, what choice do i have? this is reality. it is simply too late to stop global warming.

i am not at all happy about any of this. i accept it, but it is, nonetheless, still heartbreaking. i dread the loss of the polar bear, the flooding of cities, and i know that the people in the lowest economic classes will suffer first, and suffer the most. it is not fair, it is not just, but it is what we have done, and it seems absurd to think that sticking a piece of newspaper in a recycling bin is going to change this global truth.

but... i still recycle everything that can be recycled, re-use packaging of various sorts, shop almost exclusively at thrift stores and yard sales for clothes and other household items. i buy and glean local food when i can, and preserve much of it for the winter months, in order to eat locally all year. i garden organically, and i compost. i ride my bike for in-town transportation--often (not always), and i bring my own bags to the grocery store.



i figure, as long as humans are still living on this earth, might as well enjoy what we still have.






*i bet i'll never be asked to write about climate change again).

never thought i'd see the day...

on the way to our polling site (couldn't have asked for a prettier day)


"why that sign says 'NO'?"


we vote in a house of worship (but it's better than the knights of columbus building, where i once voted in houston)



finally, casting my ballot.



i am, for once, proud of my country. feels weird.