Saturday Night at the Vinyard

Our local farm land is pretty good for sweet wines. The people who manage this particular vineyard also like music and having people over to see their place......so every Saturday while it is somewhat warm (sometimes bewilderingly hot) they host a local band at the grange house. Lil'Bug was quite upset that we went to a music show without her (it was 14 and up) so we promised to find her a show this week: so the reggae/jazz fusion band from Iowa City, that wasn't really good enough to link to, it was.


Even though we are spoiled by are recent visit to the most talented band in the world ever's show, the over all experience of this outing was good. They have a herd of Elk that come to the fence when the music plays, the weather was perfect, the sky was clear, moon was almost full, we could even sorta see the space station with the binoculars, and Lil'Bug danced and danced.

Music Class....we do what?!?!?!?!

Yeah, What She Said......

Lil'Bug bounds into music class the way she bounds into everywhere she goes and starts singing the Tiny Tim Frog song. The teacher asks her if she like frogs. Lil'Bug says, "Oh yes!" I say that she's really good at catching them. Lil'Bug explains to the teacher that the song is all wrong because eating soap and drinking bathwater is really bad for you. She chatters on a bit. The teacher asks her if she likes butterflies........

"Oh yes! Mom and I catch um. Then we fry them up and eat them! Yum!"

That's right. Everyone turns to look at me. "Uh, no we don't."

"Yes we do mom!"

Awkward silence. Teacher starts class.

No. We. Don't. In case you were wondering. She also told the Science Center guy that we eat turtles in soup.

Gah.

Birthday Parties

I think I have it. After a lovely playdate yesterday and then some quiet reflection time, I contemplated something LIfedreamed said about how she does birthday parties: only big parties for the bigger birthdays, like 5 and 10.

Hmmm. I thought. No one else in our family celebrates with a big party unless it is a BIG milestone, then no one else is under 5 either. :) We don't do cakes, we do eat out and maybe splurge on dessert. We do a thoughtful gift or two.

Her birthday does fall on a park day.....

So last night Dearest Husband and I talked about it and decided.........

Drumroll please.....

We will bring healthy cupcakes to park day. We will stay late and grill dinner. Hopefully family can join us after work. I will let Lil'Bug wear whatever dress/cape/superhero hat she wants too. (Well, she does that anyway....)

If it rains or is waaaaaay too cold, then we will probably go to the Science Center AND we will remember to tell people of our plans. I don't mean a Science Center birthday party....just friends meeting up there. We can eat cupcakes in the cafeteria. No big deal. Just friends. She's always delighted when we run into friends at the places we visit. Then we will go out to eat with family.

I know, I know......cheating her out of some mandated cultural norm. Some families throw big parties for every member, complete with cake, mixed drinks, and lots of rowdy family/friend fun. That's just not us. I think if we did it for just her it would imbalance the harmony of our family. We can make her feel special in ways that fit with how we live our life. I hope I make her feel special and loved everyday.

When she turns 5 maybe something different.

Math Thoughts, Revisited.....

I heard someone the other day talking about how we don't really encounter "Math" as its taught in the "real world". Baloney. That's what I say. Totally baloney. Maybe that individual doesn't, but why limit the child to whatever that person's life is? I use math, as it was taught to me, all the time, as an English teacher, as a mother, as a checking account holder, as a homeowner, no less, maybe more......

Here are some examples.......grading papers, calculating weighted grades, disputing excuses (a student wrote on her quiz her work schedule instead of the answer.....I noted out the "not working" hours available, subtracted sleep and eat and drive time (based on her home address and address of work/ legal speed limit), factored in the average reading speed to the amount of words in the assigned essay and calculated that she could have read the assigned reading 152 times in the time she had available. The calculation ended with the note that her quiz score was 0....and I was docking an extra 10 points for annoying me into doing complicated math. None of my students ever did that to me again! :)....) So that was a teaching moment and amused me at the same time....yes, I said it annoyed me, but really I did it to satisfy my need for sarcasm.

Anyway, we use math to garden, to buy paint, to buy food, cook food, do taxes, calculate pension, raises, and other monetary issues. We use math to fill our autos with fuel, to fill our yard machines with oil/fuel mixtures. All of this needed to be slowly added to our skill set before we were presented with the real life math.

Maybe their point was that the math they were "taught" was useless. Maybe.