Memories

Laura sent me this email:

So Brandon and I were lying in his bed this morning with Shamoo and Mommy turtle and talking and Brandon tells me that he teaches Shamoo
and Mommy Turtle their favorite colors and their favorite numbers. What's Shamoos favorite colors - black and white. What's Mommy
Turtles favorite color -- green and yellow. What's Shamoo's favorite number. 5. What's your favorite number. 5. What's Mommy Turtle's
favorite number -- imaginary.

I probably should be kind of scared but I think I'm kind of proud.

Laura sent me this email:

So Brandon and I were lying in his bed this morning with Shamoo and Mommy turtle and talking and Brandon tells me that he teaches Shamoo
and Mommy Turtle their favorite colors and their favorite numbers. What's Shamoos favorite colors - black and white. What's Mommy
Turtles favorite color -- green and yellow. What's Shamoo's favorite number. 5. What's your favorite number. 5. What's Mommy Turtle's
favorite number -- imaginary.

I probably should be kind of scared but I think I'm kind of proud.

Caitlin is ever one to invent things. Today she walked arount the house with a spiral tube that is used for building tent mazes over her head, all bent over in a C shape. She declared, "This is my Thinking Pod to help me think!"

With a powerful thinking pod aiding her, it wasn't long before she came up with something. She got two blue plastic cups, and two red (blue is her favorite color and Brandon has red hair). She turned them to face eachother and added some tape, and declared "I have made bug catchers!"

Then, she asked me to go outside and lift the basketball thingy, which covers a dead portion of our grass. It had a toad under it yesterday, and she wants another toad. Instead, this time it had a HUGE spider! I used Caitlin's "Bug Catcher" to get it, and threw it over the fence!

I taught Caitlin how to multiply a few weeks ago. She just turned 6 in Febuary and is in kindergarten. We were just walking from the top of the hill in Meadowmont down to her school, Scroggs, and I asked if she wanted to know what multiplication was. She had seen another boy do multiplication for the teacher and new that it was an advanced skill. I told her "3 times 4 means add 4 together three times." That's all I said. After that, she could multiply every pair of numbers totaling less than 30, and usually get it right.

She demonstrated her multiplication skill to Grandma Carleen, who was quite impressed. Then, Carleen wrote 4X5 on a piece of paper, and asked "What is this?" Caitlin promptly said "9". I had to explain that Caitlin could only multiply in her head -- she had never seen a multiply symbol before! She thought that the X was a turned-over plus-sign.

Caitlin also is learning music in Miss Rebecca's Kinder Music class. Today Rebeca told Laura that she had never seen a student pick up the glockenspiel the way Caitlin had. Just tonight, I turned on the music synthesizer Uncle David gave Laura. Caitlin is having much fun with it while I write this post.

I never worry about Caitlin being smart. I just worry if we are keeping her imagination stimulated.

Caitlin said that she saw a cool "interupting volcanoe" at the school science fair. Laura and I agree that Catlin is the original interupting volcanoe!