Meet them where they are....

Tucker is going through a time where he doesn't love having stories read to him.  Well- he does- but only at bedtime.  So if during the day I am reading to the group he just doesn't seem to be paying attention.  If I make him actually sit beside me and read it's like torture- he can't sit still.  And if I let him pick the "story" he always brings me encyclopedias of some sort.  That's what he loves- "let's read the atlas".    And I'll say, "that's not a story" and then we bicker over what is a story and what is not.

So I have noticed how he's obsessed with numbers right now.  He is always writing numbers, asking to do his math, playing on the flashmaster, playing the math slam, and on and on.  He just seems to "get" math.  He learned negative numbers in one conversation in the car and now he can say 7-9 = -2.  It's crazy.  He learned to tell time in one sitting.  It's so odd to have such a math-loving person in the home.

So I was thinking the other day of how I could make him learn to love reading with us, and I thought "books on math!"  So I tried it out.  I grabbed a math book and said, "Tucker- let's read this book on power counting." All of a sudden my reluctant story boy JUMPED up and said, "hooray- wait for me!  Don't open that book until I get there!"  And we read it 3 times.

This particular book is on exponents and counting exponentially- truly not for a 5-year-old.  But he LOVED it and totally got it and even tried writing a "googol" number (a 1 with 100 zeros).  He said, "I'm writing a one and then ten rows of ten- that'll make sure I have 100 zeros".  He came alive I'm telling you- and he totally gets that "ten to third power" is 1,000.   So, I have learned- I can sit and be sad that he won't read the history books with us, or I can meet him where he is.  And he is a math/science guy so Mommy is adapting.

And if he wants to learn Roman Numerals on ABCya then who am I too judge?  

In other news, I have been going through the childrens' old notebooks from last year and throwing them away to make room for this year's work and found some cute thoughts in them that I wanted to save (as I tossed the notebooks!).  :)  These are all from Julia's work-