Being Flexible

Sunday night, I was thinking, "Tomorrow, I want to work with the girls on some calendar recognition or money value work." I meant to practice that stuff a couple of weeks ago, but I had planned to use worksheets and the printer ran out of ink.

We keep forgetting to pick up ink. That's most of the truth. The last time I went to Target, I did all of the grocery shopping I needed to do, and some clothes shopping for myself and M, since we're lacking things that fit and are appropriate for the weather. Then, I remembered I needed to get ink. I had just picked up bananas so the ink was all the way on the opposite side of the store. At some point, while passing the check out lanes, I decided I didn't have the energy for dealing with the electronics section and its overly attentive customer service reps.

Anyway, I came up with other ways I could teach the lessons and was planning to start that on Monday. But it was 80 degrees outside, sunny, and beautiful.

We wound up spending Monday afternoon outside, talking about our robin, the drought, bugs, trees and why ours don't have leaves yet. They played in the sprinkler. Yes, we're having a drought. So I justified it to them by explaining that I literally never water our lawn (front or back), and we're allowed to water it twice a week according to the city. So it seems okay to turn the sprinkler on for 20 minutes, once a week, for them to play in it.

We watched mama robin, who built her nest on top of a construction project on our patio, come and go. She laid her fourth, and final, egg yesterday morning. Now she's basically always in attendance unless she's taking a quick break to eat. I got an opportunity to talk to them about why she sometimes stands over her eggs, and other times she sits on them.

I laid in the grass and watched them play with a tiny caterpillar that they valiantly saved from an ant. Then, C made a "grass sandwich" with her towel and we talked about what types of animals might eat a grass sandwich... then what types of dinosaurs. S started to pretend to eat grass because she was a horse. And all of this while the cloth diapers were bleaching in the sun (which I also got to explain to them).

We had a great time. And it was far more educational than what I had planned. I find they learn a lot more when I let them lead. Everyone has a much better time of it, too. Still... it would be useful if they had a better grasp of how many days are in a week and how many pennies go into a dime. But we'll get to that.