mathmom's blog

Why leaf raking is the perfect exercise: It takes place outside in beautiful fall weather. It can be done while watching kids play outside. It isn't too hard, but can be done vigorously. It is something useful. It doesn't require too much thought, so you can think of other things. At the end, you have a great leaf pile to jump in. We have a pile about 2.5 feet tall and 6 feet in diameter---not as big as the piles of my youth, but still substantial. I've been raking for at least 30 minutes every day since last week. I'm not sure what can replace this exercise, since we don't live in snow shoveling country. Does anyone have any ideas?

I used to think poorly of parents who kept their 3 year olds in cribs. What's the point, I would think, they can climb in and out. Why not just get them a bed and be done with it! Are you afraid they'll fall out of bed or something? I now repent. Luke, who will be 4 in February, is still sleeping in a crib. It has more to do with inertia than anything else. When his sisters were 3, there was another baby who needed the crib, so they were in beds, no problem. I'm not opposed to putting Luke in a bed, but to do that we'd need to figure out the whole bed situation which seemed extremely complicated... We finally decided to get two low loft beds for the girls. We did not get the castle curtains that are supposed to go around them ( hmmm , Christmas presents?). Then we'll give Luke the bed we got for him when he was born---a bookshelf bed with a trundle that matches the dresser in his room, which Ella has been using until we decided what kind of bed to get for ...

Amanda's 6 th birthday party was a week ago. She wanted a mermaid party, so we decided to invite a few girls (on the theory that the boys might not be really interested) from her class to our house for a mermaid event. There are only 10 girls in her class, so I decided to invite all of them over on the theory that most of them had soccer or other activities and wouldn't be able to come. All but 2 came, and a few brought siblings, so we were pretty full up. Fortunately it was an absolutely beautiful warm fall day, so we were able to take much of the stuff outside. The first thing we did was the most fun birthday activity I've ever done. We got a long roll of butcher paper and I painted a few pieces of seaweed on it. Then we got out ALL our brushes and a box of Crayola poster paints. I told the girls to paint undersea things--- octopi , sea horses, mermaids, fish... Some painted jellyfish, or clams, and Ella added a ship. It came out so beautiful! Everyone had fun....

One of Ella's chores (suggested by her Aunt L.) is to put the stuff in the bread maker every night and program it so we have warm bread in the morning. This works well, and is also a great science experiment. We have discovered that: Bread made without salt looks OK but is barely edible. Bread made with 3 times the salt is inedible, and doesn't rise right. Bread made with no yeast is edible, sort of like a tasty rock is edible, and Ella really needs a system to make sure she puts the right ingredients in the right amounts in the right order. I've encouraged her to line up the ingredients on the counter before she starts along with the correct measuring equipment. After the last failure she allowed that that might be a good idea. We'll see. Here's our recipe for bread: 1 1/4 cup water 2 Tbsp. Earth Balance buttery stick 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar 2 cups whole wheat flour (we get ours from Great Harvest) 1 cup white flour (bread flour makes it rise better) ...

Luke has gotten out all of our train cars and made a long train and track. Then he got out the meat tenderizer hammer and crushed two graham crackers. He mixed up some "muffins" with the crumbs, spices, food coloring, cous cous , applesauce and honey. He got out the blender, plugged it in, put another graham cracker in and asked, "Now I push start?" with his finger on the button (makes me glad we don't have a blendtech ). It is now 8:40. I said, "mama needs a break!" and he allowed that we could have a break while I ate breakfast. p.s. we just got a laminator . I warned Michael not to show Luke how to use it (having seen how he reacted to being shown how to work the 3-hole punch and the comb binder). He snuck up and watched anyway. I'll let you know what gets laminated.

http://www.candyexperiments.com/p/experiments.html I can't wait!

Amanda to Ella: "Could you tell me how I am annoying?" Ella looks up, speechless (for once). "By telling you things that you already know?" continues Amanda. "Yeah," answers Ella. "But I bet you already knew that..." says Amanda. I really could not have made that one up, folks.