Today we celebrated our friend’s first birthday with a warm, exuberant party at his family’s house. There were plenty of people, and the kids had a blast playing indoors and outside in the snow. There was delicious food, not only pizza and cake and ice cream, but wonderful home-cooked Malian food. Great company too!
Our babies: BabyGirl, the birthday boy D. and their friend J.
Sitting still only works for so long now that all three of them are officially walking toddlers!
Here, JediBoy-the-Masked-Avenger tries to hand his little sister off to friend N.
After we left the party, we stopped by a thrift store not far from their house. We had several bags of things to donate, and I picked up a small bag of things to bring home. I’ve been looking for more “living” math for JediBoy, who seems ready to grasp concepts but not to memorize facts. I found two game sets - “At Home With Math,” published by an educational group out of Cambridge, MA, and Cubes which is published by Jax, the makers of “Sequence.”
JediBoy and I tried them both out while PisecoDad took BabyGirl to the store. “Cubes” was fun, but he got frustrated when he saw that he was losing his chips in the second set. I think he’ll handle the ups-and-downs of the game better when we play with a third person. The “At Home With Math” set uses four d10s and two d20s for a variety of games and has plenty of good suggestions for helping your child become better at the skills in the game, including mental arithmetic, strategy, and estimation. It also included a booklet with 10 “everyday” ways to play with and use math.
I also picked up a pile of used books, including The Salamander Room (FIAR), The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (we’d seen it before but thanks to Sara I realized we didn’t own a copy!), Franklin’s New Friend, Strega Nona Meets Her Match, Dora: Dance to the Rescue, Moonbear’s Pet (Frank Asch), three leveled readers that I think are just about right for JediBoy (early 2nd grade) - Commander Toad and the Big Black Hole by Jane Yolen and Poppleton and Poppleton Forever by Cynthia Rylant. I also picked up a “Pick a Path to Adventure” book called The Ring, the Sword and the Unicorn for JediBoy to read with PisecoDad.
It was such a nice day all around, and we’re getting ready to tuck in and stay warm at home during the storm that’s heading our way tomorrow. I think we’ll be well-prepared with books and games!
Categories:
