mathmom's blog

The other day I asked Luke to fold towels.  He does this instead of folding his clothes, which he steadily insists he does not know how to do.  I let him fold towels instead of arguing. Usually he spends most of his folding time telling me about how tired he is, and how he doesn't like to do work, and how he just can't do jobs today, and then he spends a few minutes folding like mad when his sisters are almost done.  Today, however, he folded cheerfully.  The difference?  He folded the towels into triangle shapes instead of squares. He explained that this method of folding was from North Carolina before I was born (he implied that it was from prehistoric times, but I don't remember exactly what he said...)  He tried to get me to fold my things into triangles.   He was generally so pleased with himself for having found a superior method that he was cheerful and happy the whole time, even when I tried to get him to fold the towels into squares so they would fit better on

This is what Luke brought home from school today. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the year the entire contents of the classroom will be in our house...  (Update: in case you can't tell from the picture, they are marker caps.  Apparently he wasn't the only one who took a bag of them home...) (

At Luke's school, there is a woodworking center. Parents bring in wood scraps, and the kids use hammer and nails, or glue and tape, to build things. Luke likes to make "structures"---put together pieces of wood in various ways with no glue.  So far this week he's built an airplane, a rhythm instrument (upon which he plays a rhythm from violin) and a ramp. The problem is that every day he's been bringing home piles of wood. If the economy fails and we need to heat our house with wood, we'll be  in great shape.  Today, Luke accused someone at school of stealing his airplane, so we went to check it out. He had made another ramp, but someone else had taken the pile of wood and taped it together into a large pile.  Luke made it into his ramp, and then we had to go home. There was much sadness when we left without his structure. I may have convinced him that he can do a project with Daddy---we'll see.  If it decreases the amount of wood that comes into the h