Monday, May 11, 2009

Elijah counts... beyond infinity

Elijah is obsessed with numbers right now, and he spends an awful lot of his time counting. One morning during the 2 minute drive to school he managed to get up to 250 or so. The other day he asked what the biggest number was and I told him infinity. I tried to explain the concept that there really isn't a biggest number because you can always add one more, but it didn't really fly with him. Later, when he was trying to tell a kindergartener in his class that infinity was the biggest number, he was told, "no 'and beyond' is the biggest number!" (someone has been watching too much Buzz Lightyear...). Elijah decided that he would count to the biggest numbers... so here it goes (transcript below)

"a google [a 1 with 100 zeros after it], triangle infinity, infinity 1, infinity 2, infinity 3, infinity 4, infinity 5, infinity 6, infinity 7, infinity 8, infinity 9, infinity 10, infinity 11, infinity 12, and beyond, mooseton, a thousand google one, a thousand google two, a thousand google three, a thousand google 4, a thousand google 5, a thousand google 6, a thousand google 7, a thousand 8, a thousand google 9, melmo-filloby!!

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Elijah earned a dollar

Elijah's class is having a behavior "contest"... Poor behavior earns you tally marks, and if you earn 8 tally marks, you are out of the contest. Elijah has no tally marks at school, but several of the boys are already out.

Because Elijah is obviously motivated by this system, I decided to give it a try. We have our poster board with Hannah's and Elijah's names, and if they are asked to do something (or stop doing something) they have until the count of 3 to start (or stop). If I get to 3, they get a tally mark. Elijah was doing so well, that I decided to throw in an extra incentive... if they went a week w/o getting any tally marks, they would earn a dollar. This is just free money for Hannah, but Elijah had to work a little harder.








the flash hurts his eyes...

Random Leah Pictures & Hannah's Solar System


This started off as chocolate ice cream...




Shoe thief!




Hannah drew a solar system poster for our pretend classroom

Swimming Pool

Last weekend it was quite hot, so the kids and I went to Walmart and bought a wading pool. It was a big hit!








Elijah wanted to earn a dollar, so he attempted to clean the toy room (a BIG job, and definitely worth a dollar!!). However, he'd been up late 2 nights in a row because of the school play AND he played in the wading pool for an hour... this is what happend instead :)


These flowers are blooming in my backyard, but I don't know what they are. We have several bushes of them though... Anyone up for a "name that flower" game??