Bring Your Parent’s To School

We went to my son’s school this evening to spend time with him in the classroom.   He’s been preparing for us to visit and see what work he’s been doing all week.    We didn’t know what work he was going to show us and he didn’t want to tell us so we waited until tonight to find out.

He had some things laid out on the table and when we sat down he opened up what was a book that turned into a poster-sized sheet about the sun and planets.    He’d been working on this for some time, drawing a picture of each of the planets and then writing about each of them.   He read back to us the information on each planet.    It was some of the more complex writing and drawing work I’ve seen him do.

Next he wanted to do some math work and added four digit numbers together.   This was called, “The Exchange Game” with the part of the game being to know when you need to exchange ten of one order of magnitude for the next level up.   For example, he was laying out the units portion of the problem and was looking at the numbers.   He said, “there might not be an exchange here” but then as he realized the two digits were six and eight he updated his statement with, “oh wait, six plus eight, there’s definitely gonna be an exchange.”  

As he was laying out all the chips for the exchange game he was running out of table room so he rearranged them, saying, “it’s easier to count by two’s”.    He did the remainder of the problem by twos.

After math he did some reading work with the result of the reading to circle a picture of the answer.   But my son didn’t want to circle it, it wanted to minutely and accurately trace it.    That level of detail took up the last five minutes of our time but he was very happy with his tracing.   Coincidentally we got a light tray today.   I’m going to see what he thinks about it tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said in the car today, “I feel a little tired of being a kid.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter explained to me the other night when she wanted the laser light off in their bedroom we’d put up for Halloween that she wasn’t liking the light on because it was too bright (it was green and I was surprised she saw it).   She told us, “when I sleep, my eyes are open most of the time.”