Still Waters Run Deep

It's been a quiet week at our house, mostly. The rain just keeps coming down most days, so we've mostly been at home. Although we're doing some reading, playing, cooking, and watching and listening to interesting things, the days feel slow and not very full. But that reading, in particular, really accounts for a lot of time, knowledge, and reading practice! Looking back on our library records and my notes for the week, it hasn't been as uneventful as it seemed.

We are becoming prodigious library consumers. I feel like an extravagant thief, walking out of the library each time with those huge piles of books, CDs, and DVDs, all with no money changing hands! We use the hold-and-pickup-at-our-branch system extensively, as well as visiting the main library every few weeks. We are good about getting things back on time or early, but our library doesn't charge late fees on items from the children's section, so even the occasional late item is free, as long as we don't lose it. This sort of thing is worth the sales and parcel taxes for the libraries, I tell you.

Some borrowed items we've read, watched, or listened to recently:

• The Way Things Work animated episodes on Wheels and Axles and on Sound
• An animated version of the Greek myth of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece
• Singin' in the Rain, which provided interesting side conversations about how movies are often made on sets, even when the action appears to take place outdoors; the difference between silent films and talkies; sorting out all the movies-within-the-movie; and suspension of disbelief in movies and musicals ("Why is he not using his umbrella?")
• A DVD on beginning Spanish for kids. I was singularly unimpressed with the attempts at teaching, especially if they're aiming at kids who aren't great readers yet. But P and T watched with interest and picked up a few things.
• A music and story CD called Mr. Beethoven Lives Upstairs, about Beethoven's life, his music, and the odd habits he had while composing
• Other classical CDs from the library, which unfortunately were in the wrong cases, so we didn't have much information on the pieces or composers
• LOTS of books in P's favorite series: Magic Tree House, Magic School Bus chapter books, Fairy Realm, and the Rainbow Magic fairy books. Here's a sampling of topics in Magic Tree House books P's read recently: Leonardo da Vinci, the Great Depression, Carnival in Venice circa 1750, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, ocean life, the arctic, the Old West, and Ireland in the early Middle Ages (monks preserving written documents, Viking invasion, and a bit about the older Celtic culture). P also has been listening to The Children of Green Knowe on CD while cleaning her room, and she says she likes it. I like it when a new author squeezes in among the series monopolists, though one could really pick worse series than Magic Tree House!

We've also had chances to learn through everyday experience and curiosity:

• We replaced some batteries in a toy, so both kids got a look at battery-placement diagrams, how to recognize the plus and minus terminals on a battery, and how to get batteries to fit in their spots.
• Today when P had a lot of her folded laundry to put away and T kept following her into her room and slowing her down, P had the idea to bring out her toy cash register and play "store" with T. She was buying her clothes from him in the living room, one small pile at a time, then sorting them out into her dresser drawers and coming back for more. T would type a number on the register and P would read it to him (she's getting pretty good at place value up to 3 or 4 digits) and pretend to pay him appropriately. After the laundry was put away, they sorted out the play money, and P showed T what all the different kinds of coins were. Since P just recently got that worked out herself, it reminded me of the medical school mantra, "See one, do one, teach one." I also noticed when I was a tutor, and then a teacher, of physics and high school math, that nothing solidified a piece of knowledge for me like having to teach it to others, especially others with learning styles different from my own. So you can imagine the silent applause for this sibling-initiated game!
• P noticed moisture on the outside of her cup of ice water and asked about it. I explained condensation (relating it to relative humidity and molecular energy through phase changes, though not in those words), and she got it. Later we made toasted-cheese sandwiches, and P commented that the cheese became a liquid. We talked about observations that would validate that idea (e.g., the cheese flowing downhill or re-solidifying as it cooled), and she was right on. P commented after assembling another sandwich for toasting, "I used my quesadilla skills too." There's nothing like a little metacognition to go with your learning.
• On our one sunny day, we went to a nearby park where there are paddleboats. P and I went for a ride with her aunt and cousin, and we got a chance to do same pedaling, see the rudder and paddle wheel at work on other boats, and talk a little about how they worked. 
• T keeps working at his jigsaw puzzles, with and without help, and his spoken syntax is really shaping up beautifully.

And just now, P brought me the cash register with a decimal number on its screen, wanting to read it to me and find out what the numbers after the decimal point meant. Mama like.