Simple Woman's Daybook Entry

Outside my window... An absolutely gorgeous fall morning.  The air is still and the neighborhood is quiet.  I hear the occasional crow...

I am thinking... about how the Pope moved so many people this week.  I'm not Catholic, but his words are for all of us.  I hope Congress listens.  I hope the nation listens.  I hope the world listens.

I am thankful... That the cub scout meeting that I led last week went well.  We have 10 little boys - and they are all full of life yet very sweet.  The object of the meeting was to create *something* out of recycled materials.  Boys this age are not big on crafts... (are they ever?) but I did find a cool project on Pinterest where the boys could create a wolf head, since they are wolves right now.  They were actually excited!  I have all the pieces and parts that they have constructed, now I just need to glue it all together and spray paint it.  They then can add details this coming week.

From the Learning Rooms... Rylan has finally clicked with multiplication, Owen is really getting into math as well - MEP is a very good fit for him and his problem-solving style.  Colin is spending lots of time on ABC Mouse and really enjoying it.  On Friday, I watched a fantastic online discussion given by Julie Bogart from Brave Writer on Periscope, called 'When it all goes wrong in your homeschool'.  It was just the shot in the arm I needed for positive thinking after the first month of slogging through work with the kids.  Even though this is our 8th year homeschooling, sometimes you need to hear that it will all be OK over and over and over again.  This particular discussion is no longer available on Periscope (they only remain for 24 hours), but Julie indicated that she would put it up on the Brave Writer site in the near future.

In the kitchen... I figured out a quick and easy way to create beef stew this past week.  I purchased two packages of Hormel's Beef Tips in Gravy (which would be about the same price as getting stew meat), 32 oz beef stock, bottle of beer, baby carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms and baby potatoes or sweet potatoes.  First saute the onion and mushroom in some butter or oil, and after a few minutes add in some chopped celery.  While the veggies are sauteing, I put the carrots and potatoes (cut into 1 inch chunks) into a pampered chef microwave steamer with a little bit of water, and steamed them in microwave for about 7-8 minutes.  This will cut down on the cooking time, overall.  As soon as the onions turn golden brown and most of the liquid from the mushrooms has cooked off, sprinkle a generous amount of flour over the vegetables and stir until it is mixed in well.  Then pour in a little beer to deglaze the pan, scraping all the good bits off the bottom.  Keep pouring in a little more beer, stir, and then a little more, until the entire bottle is mixed in well.  Add the beef stock, stir well.  Add in the carrots and potatoes - plus the water they steamed in!  Finally, open up the two containers of Beef Tips and scrape all of it into the pot and mix well.  Add a little pepper.  I would nix adding extra salt, there is plenty in the stock and Beef Tips.  Any part of this process can be tailored to what you have on hand veggie-wise.  You can also add some Worcestershire,  a bit of tomato paste... whatever.  When it is all mixed in, cook for about 15 minutes and it should be good to go.  I actually made it twice this week.  Dean needed to take stew with him for Fall Camporee this weekend, so I made a second batch.  It goes together from start to finish in about 30 minutes.  Yummy and kid-approved!

I am wearing... blue silk(ish) pjs from this past Mother's Day.

I am creating... Minion costumes!  Do you know how hard it is to find a large piece of egg-crate foam??  I gave up after visiting five different stores looking for a twin-size mattress foam pad, and just purchased a roll of foam from Hobby Lobby and used a 40% off one item coupon on my phone.  It's not quite as thick as what I wanted, but it will do.  Can't wait to get started. :)

I am going... On a fall hike very shortly.  There is a family fall colors hike at the cub scout camp about an hour away, so we are picking up my dad and then heading up there to join the other families from our pack, and Dean and Jordan will join us as well, since they will be ending their camporee stuff just down the road at the boy scout camp.  Should be a beautiful day!  

I am wondering... If you still get monthly cramps after a hysterectomy. (?)  Three weeks and counting...

I am reading... I visited the Pottermore site yesterday, and read the new bit on there about Harry's ancestors.  Loved it!

I am hoping... That even though I really do love the sunshine, I hope that it starts to cool off a bit and feel more like 'fall'.  I also hope that Rylan's loose tooth comes out today.  It is her first molar tooth to come loose, but it is wedged against her wire band of her braces, so she can only wiggle it in one direction.  She is complaining.  Loudly.  All the time.

I am looking forward to... This coming week.  No extra stuff on the schedule.  It is also my dad's birthday and my FIL's birthday (same day).  I am thinking about taking my dad to the Denver Botanical Gardens.

I am learning... How to shape foam with scissors this week.  Minion teeth...

I am hearing... Clone Wars on Netflix (I think they are actually really good!).

Around the house... Tons of dog hair.  Still!  I hope Abby finishes her seasonal shed soon.

I am pondering... All the advice I heard on the online discussion I mentioned earlier.  Lots of good stuff there - especially the advice that homeschoolers (the parents, really) need to offload the tendency to feel like society's perception of homeschooling rests on their shoulders.  (I do this to myself all. the. time.) Yes, it is a non-conventional educational choice that we've made, but don't feel like you have to live under the constant pressure to always perform at a higher standard in order to prove the skeptics wrong...  This includes making comments to public school parents that your homeschooling experience is above par, even when it isn't.  Even homeschoolers can have bad days (weeks)(months)(year?) and it is okay to be honest with yourself and those you converse with.  Don't put yourself in the position that you must uphold the entity of 'Homeschooling' and push yourself to emulate an impossible, and mythical standard.  Keep it real.  Embrace your messy house, your lack of exercise or balanced meals and the children that refuse to produce stellar work, and just enjoy your choice to be with your children and homeschool them.  You are so lucky to have this opportunity.  Children grow up way to fast, and you need to treasure these years, not be a slave to them.  Good advice! 

One of my favorite things... Telling my youngest, as I put him to bed, about the exciting thing that he will be doing the next day.  He is so cute when he is excited. :)

A few plans for the rest of the week... A hike today, and possibly the Botanical Gardens mid-week.  Then the usual roundup of activities: Lego robotics, ballet, jazz, violin and Nutcracker practice for Rylan, piano and cub scouts for Owen, and boy scouts for Jordan.

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...

Rylan helped me pick out a fall wreath yesterday, for the front door.  I love fall!!

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Weekly wrap up: I need some self-discipline...

 

 

In regards to self-discipline: if you don't use it, you lose it. 

 

I am sadly not using it when it comes to games on my iPad (I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually), blogs and newsfeeds, and endless email.  The iPad and computer are constant teaching companions during schooltime - it's just so hard for me to resist a peek at the other stuff too.  I need to flex my self-discipline muscle more often. 

 

I'll start with one rep and work my way up from there.

 

Okay.  Two reps.

 

Three... tops.  But then I'll need a massage afterwards.

 

 

 

We have had a fairly decent school week.  Monday morning we squeezed in some math before we met up with the Daisy scouts for our first service project of the year - pulling weeds from the sand at a local playground.  I've got to share a conversation I posted on Facebook about our math lesson that morning...

 

"In the midst of math this morning, Owen walked by Rylan and handed her one of the play phones and they proceeded to have a long, drawn-out pretend conversation. So I put my hand to my ear like a phone and "dialed" Rylan.

Me: Hello? Miss Rylan?
Rylan: (Giggle) Yes?
Me: Can you please answer problem number four?
Rylan: Um... Rylan can't come to the phone right now. Can you call back later?

(Sigh)

 

 

After a not-so-productive math lesson we headed to the park and we all worked away in the hot sun (it was nice in the shade).  It was reassuring to see all of the girls working so hard and helping each other out.  It's a great mix of girls!  It also gave the moms a chance to chat.  I miss talking shop (homeschool) - so it was a great way to pass the time.  I also have to say that I am one lucky, lucky mom.  Jordan is twelve - and he is the oldest sibling that comes along.  There is only one other older brother, but I think he is like seven.  So considering all of that - Jordan does not complain about it.  In fact, he rather likes it.  He seems to prefer playing with younger kids - and does not mind a bit if they are girls.  The games he comes up with are quite fun - usually involving a chase of some sort - and the little girls love it.  Most other twelve year-old boys would probably give their moms serious grief over having to tag along to a girl scout meeting (unless of course it was for Cadettes...)

 

We had to dash off to Rylan's violin lesson straight from the park.  During the lesson Rylan practiced several new things - touching her fingertips and clapping out a rhythm (Miss-iss-ip-pi-hot-dog) and singing an 'A' (or la).  Rylan was low on the first attempt, and on the second she hit it.  I about. fell. out. of. my. chair.  Then, after a couple of near-misses, she hit it again.  My mother and my aunt both have perfect pitch (able to produce or identify a given note without a reference pitch), and nobody yet (kids or grandkids) has it too, so far... Rylan's teacher showed us that (if your violin is in tune) if you hold your violin close to your mouth as you sing an 'A', the 'A' sting will vibrate and hum along with you - and it does!  How cool is that?!

 

On Tuesday we did school and karate and not much else worthy of note.  I kept the tv off and did minimal news checking.  The anniversary of 9/11 is not something I want to dwell on too much - and the little kids don't really need to see those horrible images.  It can wait until they are much, much older.

 

Wednesday was supposed to be a very busy day with schoolwork, piano lessons, Park Day, a potluck and evening karate and dance.  At 7 a.m. I went out to the garage to fetch something from the car and noticed that all of the interior lights were on.  Right then I should have thought about testing the battery by turning on the car, but I did not.  My mom came and went for the piano lesson and then we decided to skip Park Day.  It was cool and rainy, and plans were falling through right and left.  Afternoon nap didn't happen until 3:30 because Colin fought it every step of the way, so that meant that our plans to attend our homeschool groups annual not-back-to-school potluck was going to be a no-go - there was no way in hell I was taking a small child with only a 45 min. nap under his belt.  He is a holy terror in that state.  He finished his nap, we finished school and the kids got ready for their respective classes.  We were even going to make it on time!  Went out to start the car and nothing but clickclickclickclickclick.  Damn.  So even IF we had wanted to go to Park Day or the potluck, we wouldn't have been able to anyway.  Dean was on his way home in the vanpool, so we just waited for him to arrive home and then jump the car for us.  It was too late to leave for lessons at that point, so the day was pretty much a wash.

 

Thursday brought big disappointment for Jordan when he found out in karate that he was not going to be able to test for his belt this weekend.  He simply does not have the class time in - and through no fault of his own, either.  Visitation time with his mom plus a couple of scouts outings interfered with his ability to get enough classes in during this past 9 week cycle.  They require a minimum of 14 on-level classes, 3 review classes, and 3 sparring sessions.  Jordan got the 3 and 3, but he only had maybe 5? 6? of the on-level classes.  This makes two belt promotions in a row that he has missed.  He knows that it's just how it has to be, but he is still taking it hard.

 

Friday brought the most awesome revelation - ever!  As Jordan and I were sitting down to do his math lesson, the thought occurred to me to check to see if I could bring up his math website on the iPad.  You see - the way we 'do math' is that we sit down at the computer for his MEP lesson, and Jordan sits where he can see the computer screen - for the occasional times that I need to swivel the screen in his direction if he needs to see a graphic or something.  I print off the practice book pages for him to keep in his math notebook, but I don't print off the teacher's lessons - that would be 3-4 pages a lesson, for 175 lessons.  No way.  So I just read off the lesson and instruct as we go.  This has limited us to getting math done in the mornings only - and if something is scheduled in the morning, then math does not get accomplished at all.  The office/schoolroom is located directly underneath Colin/Rylan's room, so we can't school in there during naptime.  So portability is key.  Math was not portable.  (I really do have a lot to say about math - I need to get my curriculum posts done!).  So, long boring story short - I CAN get MEP on my iPad, so that means we can do it wherever, whenever.  And - the graphics that I need him to look at from time to time can be expanded with the zoom feature, and we can pass the iPad back and forth as we talk about them.  Case in point - Friday's lesson was about angles - in relation to clock faces, an actual orienteering compass and so forth.  We discussed fractional amounts and their related number of degrees (5 minutes on a clock is 30 degrees and so forth..) fractional compass amounts  (from N to NE is 45 degrees, NNE to ENE is 45 degrees...)  It helped that he could look at the clock and compass graphics as we talked about them.  Thank goodness he has already had orienteering with the scouts - that made it a lot easier to talk about.  We just spread out a map of Arches NP and talked about getting from point A to point B.

 

I also figured out that we can do IXL math practice on the iPad too - so that means that I can keep more kids going at one time, instead of cycling them through the one computer that we have, one at a time.  Unfortunately, the iPad does not support flash, so we can't do Reading Eggs.  They do have an app, but it is not the same thing.

 

We also used the iPad earlier in the week to discuss the sun and the movement of the planets in relation to the sun.  Solar Walk is the most awesome app I have ever seen.  It out does any 2-dimensional discussion  - the kids just can't wrap their head around what the rotations look like.  It is like having your own personal Planetarium show!

 

One more week to go and then a very much-needed break!

Show your work!!

(Yes, Honey, this one's for you.  You're welcome.)

So, in a flash of inspiration, we (er.. my husband ) solved a problem that has been nagging at us for over a year:  How to finish off the sandbox.  We purchased shade fabric last year, when we built it, but we couldn't come up with a design that would allow us to easily attach the fabric during the summer months, and then remove it during the winter, and have a framework that would support the fabric and not allow it to droop.  We were stumped up until Saturday morning, when we decided to Google images of pergolas and Dean saw a design that used a pyramid shape as a framework for the roof.  Ah-ha!!

So Dean ran some figures and we made ANOTHER trip to Home Depot to get more lumber for the composter because the MOTHER of all composters clearly does NOT have enough heft to it yet.

Dean cut and measured and cut and measured all day.  And I stained and stained and stained all day.  (My mother asked me *why* we are making the composter 'look pretty'?  It is wood, and will be filled with yucky, wet stuff.  It's gotta be relatively waterproof.  And yes.  It needs to look pretty.  Because our yard is ugly and it needs at least something nice to look at in all its dead-grass, weed-haven vastness!

Saturday came and went and on Sunday morning I went to check something on the computer.  It was still on Dean's login and there it was: trig calculations for the pyramid roof.

(gasp!)

(CHEATER!!!!!!)

Dean came in at just about that moment and I turned on him immediately...

"I thought you were some sort of math whiz!  And here you are, using the COMPUTER to do the math for you!"  (add in a you-were-totally-awesome-up-until-now glare...)

Dean replies with absolute indignation, "I was just checking my answer!  (he turns and goes back into the garage and comes back with two white boards with math calculations all over them)  Here you go - see!  I showed my work!"

Indeed he did.  It even looks pretty.  And in color!

So, I have to take it back.  My husband does show his work.  And it shows up in places like this:

Please forgive me for sounding like Baljeet.

Now, originally, this whole missive was going to be about how much math we have used in our landscaping, gardening, building efforts as of late.  Jordan got to be here for some of it.  He helped plot out a circular bed for me.  We were talking about properties of circles at the time, so it gave us an excellent opportunity to discuss radius, diameter and circumference.  Dean pounded a peg in the middle, and I told Jordan that I wanted it 6 feet across.  So Jordan figured out that he should measure and attach a 3 ft long piece of string to the stake, and - walking around in a circle - mark out the perimeter of my circle so we could see where we needed to remove grass.  I wish Jordan had been here to see the pyramid beams as well - although trigonometry is way above my head.  When it comes time, I will be learning right along with him.

I have a feeling our teacher will demand that we show our work....



Adding with Cuisenaire rods

As we have been working through Rylan's lessons (she is midway through Year 1 of MEP), she has been having difficulty readily identifying number partners when adding.  When we hit the practice pages for adding up to six, it was time to have her use some number strips.  Instead of printing out and cutting up a bunch of strips, I just pulled out our box of Cuisenaire rods, and wrote their 'value' on them with a Sharpie.  And then I helped her build these patterns to help her see the partnerships better.

But.  I didn't tell her what we were building.

And I know we got somewhere with this because all of a sudden she exclaimed, "Wait!!!  I see something!  I see a pattern!".

Bingo.

Keepin' it real...

Sigh.  One of my biggest complaints about my college education is that the pedagogy was weak on the how aspects of teaching.  HOW do you teach a child to read?  I got all sorts of ideas on how to support literacy, but not the nuts and bolts of the HOW.  Same with math.  I had one - O*N*E math class.  We mostly played games and had an incredibly boring textbook to read.  Ninety-nine percent of it was about aligning your lessons to the NCTM standards.  Super-helpful.

Most of the ideas I use (to compliment Rylan's MEP curriculum) with Rylan are either something I came up with on the fly or something I saw on some one's blog.  For me, the best blogs for ideas are Magic and Mayhem, No Time for Flashcards, and Homeschool Creations.  There are sooo many good ideas from these terrific moms!

Yesterday's math lesson was all about 0's, 1's and 2's -adding and subtracting, inequalities and writing practice.  We've been doing the same thing for the past two weeks, and each day it's just a little more involved.  I've noticed that Rylan does great when she is working with something tangible and not-so-great when she is working in the abstract.  Well, duh... kids aren't wired for the abstract quite yet.  I wonder why the curriculum developers, the so-called education experts that advise the curriculum developers, and some of the teachers that use the curriculum, keep pushing the issue that kids need to be reading, writing and completing abstract calculations at increasingly younger ages.  I think it is an issue of politicians needing quantifiable results to push their agendas - and true education just gets swept out the window.  I wish they (the out-of-touch politicians) could sit in the front lines and see what their unreasonable expectations are doing to kids.  I really, really do.  Once again, I am so thankful that I got out of public education.  But, still, even as a homeschooler, I feel compelled to get the reading/writing ball rolling - it is so hard to resist the pressure not to do so.

Rylan is five years and six months.  She can count to about seventy.  She can't skip count - and oh, how I have tried.  She can recognize odd and even, and knows about inequalities.  The 'Alligator Mouth' did the trick - except now she wants to draw the teeth in every time.  She can count objects, play along with a number story (I'll detail that in a moment), she can divide things out equally and group according to attribute.  She recognizes patterns and loves to play with unifix cubes and Cuisenaire rods.

But.

When I ask, pointing to the printed problem on the lesson's worksheet for the day, "What is one plus one?", I get a blank stare.  I pull out two counters and try again.  Then I get results.  I know this all takes time - but some days I just feel like abandoning the worksheets altogether because I feel like they are getting in the way.  I don't ever want math to become a negative thing between us.  She loves to do all of the activity stuff - and I want to keep it that way.

Yesterday we did the little flashcards for the first time (pictured at the top).  She happened to have her Lego Jessie with her, so Jessie 'helped' her count.  This is probably about the third time we have counted using a number line.  I've had this mat for a long time, I just never remember to pull it out.  We are working on jumping up the number line to add, and jumping down to subtract.  It just so happens that Jordan is also doing a lot of number line work lately- he is working with positive and negative numbers right now.  So he pipes up and starts telling her about negative numbers.  Then I have to send him to the kitchen table to finish his work before he completely confuses her.



In a part of her lesson we needed to demonstrate the concept of 'equal' with a balance.  That is a tool I wish we had... we had to settle for a good-old-fashioned wire hanger and plastic bags.  It worked for the most part.  I had to pull out the marble-jar, which has been in hiding for the greater part of a year.  Owen and Colin were delighted and of course begged and begged and begged for marbles.  I now have about 15 marbles to fish out from underneath the stove alone.  Doing 'real' activities like this works really well for Rylan, so I try and make the bulk of the lesson doing stuff like this.  I know that kids do this sort of thing in public school too, but with us, it's individualized.  Owen doesn't like using counters as much as Rylan does, give Jordan too much 'stuff' to work with and he gets completely distracted - keep it simple.  You can't quite expect that to happen in the regular classroom.

The dryer completed its cycle right in the middle of our math lesson.  (I have a hard and fast rule that you drop everything and tend to the clothes, immediately.)  So as Rylan and I stood in the closet and sorted and folded and hung up stuff, we counted.  "Rylan has three pants.  She puts one away (puts in on the shelf), now how many does she have?  Daddy has two pairs of socks.  If we put both pairs on the shelf, how many do we have left?  Two minus two equals zero."  And so on.  This works pretty well and we use this number story activity in sorts of different scenarios.

As long as we keep it real, a connection can be made.  I think that might be good advice for all facets of life.

Singing the praises of Kahn Academy



School is as intermittent as ever in our house... I am still searching for that elusive balance of schoolwork/cleaning/activities/fun.  It seems that activities (actually the driving to and from) always wins.

The bulk of our school time has been relegated to the middle of the afternoon, while the little boys are napping.  This is not our best time of day.  It's actually the worst.  We try for mornings, but schtuff always seems to foul up any momentum we get going.  Jordan has taken to doing a lot of his workbook-type stuff in our bedroom, spreading out on our bed.  I don't blame him.  It's quiet and the little kids don't bother him nearly as much.  I will pass through as I am shuffling laundry around, and he will read off Q&A's to me, we discuss and move on to next thing.  It's hardly optimal, but we're getting the job done.

Math, however is an entirely different matter.  I am locked in with MEP math.  I have a love/hate relationship with it, but I think it is the best out there.  No other curriculum spurs as much discussion (and at times frustration) as MEP.  The lengths that we go to work through the theory and logic of the problems presented is quite extreme at times, but Jordan will not quit until he solves whatever it is he is working on.  We have stretched a single lesson over 2-3 days at times, but we get there.  Jordan is eleven and technically in the 6th grade.  He is currently on Year 5, Lesson 56.  There are 175 lessons per 'Year'.  The program goes through Year 6.  Rylan is working through Year 1 and is on Lesson 28.  I started her in the Reception Year in June, and quickly dropped it and just moved on to Year 1.  I should have started her much earlier.  I am thinking that the 'Year' is advanced by one, when you line it up (skills wise) to the US grade level system.  So, with Jordan doing Year 5 work, I think it lines up pretty well with what a 6th grader would be doing.

Jordan is currently working with negative numbers, absolute value and adding/subtracting positive and negative numbers.  The previous topic was surface area and volume.  By the final 2-3 lessons on that topic things were starting to click, but prior to that, those were the days we were at it for 2 hours or more (with lots of breaks) to get it done.  Sigh.  The current topic?  Done in 20 min.  I am so glad he is having success with this - I hope it boosts his confidence - he is going to need it in the coming years.  He struggles when things move beyond two-dimensional.  So do I, for that matter.  When he is learning advanced Algebra, I will be there right along with him, learning as well.

Back to math... So, even though I was introduced Kahn Academy a long, long time ago (don't remember how or when, but I imagine is was a link that someone in our homeschool group posted at some point), I never really explored it beyond a 5 minute cursory overview, saved the link, and then promptly forgot about it.  It took the urging of my husband to get me to go back and really look.  Wow!  What a great tool - and it takes some of the pressure off of me.  I don't want 'my way' to be the only way that Jordan learns how to solve a problem.  MEP does an excellent job of presenting multiple ways to solve a problem, but that is only if I can correctly disseminate to Jordan what they are trying to do.  Quite frankly, because the program was originally Hungarian, translated into English and the piloted in English grammar schools, some of the methods are absolutely foreign (no pun intended) to me.  That is actually what I LIKE about this program!  Americans are stuck in a rut about there is only ONE way to solve a problem, and that solving multiplication problems the way our grandparents did should be good enough.  It's not.  Anyway, I digress.   Again.

Kahn academy saved the day last week when it came to explaining the proper way to do a permutation - I couldn't even find the proper video at first because I was looking under the wrong heading- it is listed under the Algebra 1 heading - which just about gave me a heart attack.  I'm not ready for this!!!  That question didn't even come from a MEP lesson - it came from a Problem Solving review question on his weekly Math's Mate review sheet.  He is currently working in the second book, the 'Red' book.  This is an Australian program that is an absolute bitch to get a hold of, if you are a homeschooler.  My nephews use it in their public middle school down in Broomfield, CO., and when I flipped through it, I knew I had to have it for Jordan.  I contacted the one and only US distributor, who happens to live just outside of Denver, and he is an old curmudgeon who doesn't want to sell single copies to homeschoolers.  There are 8 levels of workbooks or so, and he will only sell me one or two at a time, so I have to beg and borrow and lie about twice a year in order to get the next book we need. I told him that if he would just sell me the entire set, he could be done with me, but he won't budge.  So I call him every few months, and we get along fabulously.  not.  My SIL (a teacher) has access to the workbooks the district purchases, so she may be my resource for the remaining 5 books I need.  They are thought-provoking and TOUGH for some of the problems, and an overall good review to keep a variety of math concepts fresh.  Jeez.. look at me.  I digressed again!

So we watched a video about how to correctly go about doing a permutation.  I love, love, love the simple, straightforward approach that Salman Kahn takes as he presents the topic.  It isn't rushed, but it is short and sweet and to the point.  Dean and I are set up as 'coaches' and Jordan has a log-in so that he can go on there and work through all sorts of different review problems and earn points for doing so.  The site has now become the carrot at the end of the math lesson.  Jordan watches a video or two about the topic we covered in the lesson, and then works on earning points by doing review problems.  He loves it - which I am totally in awe over.  I hope that with all of this review, Jordan will finally master his times tables.  The kid can work a number line forwards and backwards, but ask him what 3 times 4 is and all you get is 'huh?'.