Another Lazy Saturday

I just had to go upstairs at 9:54PM on a Saturday night and tell my 5.41 year old son to put his book down and go to sleep.

On her way to yet another bar(!), my wife tucked him in at 8:40PM and told him he could stay up and read to himself - and that's precisely what he did - blazing 40 pages into Book 2 of the The Secrets of Droon.

I took that video a few weeks ago. It's funny because for sometime he read to himself ALOUD. He must have really been parching his throat until just now when he figured out how to read silently.

He was up early this morning - not painfully early but soon enough. So I kicked him out of our bed, told him to go turn on my computer, and go to ThatQuiz.org. You never saw him run so fast as when I tell him he can go on the PC - even if strictly for *educational* purposes only.

For a good thirty minutes he brushed up on South and Latin American geography, gave it yet another unsuccessful stab at cell structure, before moving on to coordinate geometry (graphing points is within his ken).

After breakfast his mother sat him down for some seatwork. I believe they did several pages in his Gifted & Talented workbook and then a mapping exercise. They were there for probably more than an hour while I put the 3.83 year old Princess on StarFall.com for her phonics *work*.

While he brushes his teeth, I ALWAYS make the Prince *skip-count*. We do *thirty-counts*. For example, today was easy; he had to count to 10 by one-thirds. Then I make him repeat the count twice more on paper when he's done in the bathroom. A more difficult exercise in his curriculum is say counting backwards from 180 by 6s. A lot of adults can't even do that! I also make my daughter count now EVERY TIME she/we brush her teeth as she's climbing the ladder of numeracy these days. In fact she has almost completed Kumon's Simple Addition workbook.

Next, my son was directed to go read one of his books but for some reason that didn't take. So I told him to go do his daily *piano work* for 10 minutes and off he ran - setting the oven timer and then practicing the Star Wars Imperial March which he loves.

Then Mrs. C-Nut took them to a great children's library a couple of towns over. The Prince came back with 10 audiobooks and who knows how many other books. Put it this way, I did the library *return* today at our local library for last week. There must have been 30 items in the bag my wife gave me; I could barely carry it!

This afternoon, while his mother was at yoga(!), we decided to officially start playing chess (while I was simultaneously cooking dinner!). So he grabbed the set he got a while back for his birthday and I had him read a bit of the rules. Then I taught him how all the pieces moved but it seemed like he was already somewhat acquainted with the parameters, perhaps from having watched me tie/lose to his great-grandfather a few weeks ago.

After dinner, I had him do a blog post on chess, which he did. For a longer post like that, we write it out beforehand. I interview him and try to get him to logically articulate a summarizing post. Usually I tell him we have to *write 5 sentences* or *seven sentences*. I make him read and re-read whatever it is we have scribbled down so he can learn about *flow*. Once it's written up, he has to go over and post it on his own; he can upload pics, spell-check it, title it, and everything. Today it took a solid 45 minutes of work.

For that he earned a homemade milkshake!

Then it was bed. See the beginning of this post.

Keep up with my son's blog here - The Youngest Blogger.