little signs of growing up
Last night I would have loved to have have gone to bed at 7:30—I was in bed, in fact, just finishing up reading to the boys. But I couldn't, because there were still things going on in my household. In school terms Harvey is a sixth grader now; that doesn't mean much for most things, but on Sunday he does go to Kids Church. Yesterday was his last day as a member of Elementary Kids Church, and while he won't be officially starting Youth Group until September all the sixth graders were invited to join the gathering yesterday evening for some get-to-know-you games... beginning at 8:00. Before too long, I'm sure that when Harvey chooses to stay up I don't need to play any part in his late-night plans. But for now he still appreciates having someone available to put him to bed. So I stayed up. At least I didn't have to drive him anywhere!
Elijah also showed signs of surprising maturity yesterday, at least in one small area. Apropos of nothing he told me, "sixty plus sixty is one hundred twenty," and then asked what 120 + 120 would be.
"Well," I said, "What's a hundred plus a hundred?"
"Oh," he said. "It's... two hundred and forty. And two hundred and forty plus two hundred and forty is four hundred and eighty. Four hundred and eighty plus four hundred and eighty is eight hundred and... no, it's nine hundred something."
Well! I'd included a lot about place value and adding tens and ones in my plans for his math work this school year, but I guess we won't need to work too hard on that! I can tell you that we didn't do anything more than add one-digit number last year, and not too much of that (I did work to build the foundation for understanding place value... but I didn't know how well he was listening). We'll just add it to the folder labeled "unschooling works." And maybe think about introducing some algebra this fall?