I've discovered that the best time to do school stuff with my kids really is first thing in the morning!

I was ready and they were up. Not sure what time--7? 7:15? I decided to print off a worksheet for ds--+3--and I grabbed our bead frame (which he'd used the other day to count on) and set up the questions with 3 all ready. He loved doing the sheet and was so proud of himself when there were some questions he got really easily. I'm so amazed at his little math brain--so many wonderful strategies in there that are just there, nothing he's needed to be taught. [I'm just thinking: am I respecting the two oldest's differences? If at one point they did have good strategies, they've gone bye-bye, although the 12yo seems to be redeveloping some on his own. I think the 15yo did have good strategies for grades 7 and 8 math--but her desire was to learn and understand. Her mind has shifted to just doing the math, getting the right answer and moving on.] When he did 3+7 he really impressed me. The 3 was already in place and he looked at the beads left and it only took him a second to see that they were 7 (I think he can identify a group of 5 on sight). And he knew that one full row was 10. He said out loud, "3 plus... all of this. It's 10!" Very cool. He's also writing some very nice numbers.

I told dd I was going to show her something in math and that I wasn't going to ask her to do any of it, but she could ask me questions. I put something on the board like 4312 x 3. She said, "I can do that!" and wouldn't let me do it. lol. I've mentioned in the past and on different lists how this can be a valuable technique with kids who feel pressured by us asking them things. She made a small error and I showed her another way to look at the question to see why we add the 1 that we carry after we've done the multiplication. Then I showed her another question and she started coming up with all kinds of crazy questions: times, divide, questions with times, divide and subtract... She grabbed the calculator to see if I was right. But I verbalized EVERYTHING that I did. She's the kind of kid who will learn from the verbalization rather easily. Maybe not this time, but we do some large multiplication a few times like that and she'll be ready to try some on her own. I think the best part of it all was there was no frustration on her part, no feeling bad (not even about her small mistake), it was a very positive math time.

When we finished that, she just HAD to go get the book I took out from the library that I thought she'd be interested in: Arthur and the Invisibles. She says it's really, really good. She's been reading about 1.5 hours now.

My niece is now looking through books, as is ds. It's very quiet here. Except for the water pouring down from the water filter in the fish tank. I'm working on the 15yo's math sheets. I've pulled out the two texts we have and am going to take the best of each and put together some sheets. Each sheet will have a little simple review part at the top (max. 10 questions) and then move onto the lesson stuff, with an example followed immediately by practice questions (maybe 5 each, depending on how many different examples; there are 4 examples in the section I'm doing up today), followed by Extra Practice questions. She will decide for herself if she's going to do extra practice questions and which ones. If she keeps all the sheets, then the extra practice sections can serve as review/practice for just before units tests or her final exam.

Oh, distractions getting in the way. It seems it is now snack time and then we are going to go out.