And if you don’t have kids of your own, feel free to borrow any rugrats you know 
Right, I must brag. Last night we were visiting my in-laws. MIL asked flodjunior, who’s 8 1/2 and in third grade, how he was doing with math at school. He said he was supposed to be memorizing his times table but he wasn’t quite finished yet. So she asked him if he knew what 7 times 8 is. “I don’t remember,” he said…
“…but I can figure it out if I work backwards from 70.” !!! :eek:
The kid groks that 7x8 is the same as (7x10)-(7x2). And yes, he got the right answer.
What are our other Junior Dopers up to lately?
My son (4 and a little) is just getting the small muscle coordination to be able to write letters. We were working on “A”
He was having the hardest time. “This is making me so mad! I just have to keep practicing.”
He stuck with it, and is on his way to mastering “A”
My little one has always been impatient. She walked at 8 months.
Now she will be five in march. She has been writing her own name since before she turned 4. She writes and illustrates her own books. She makes up the story and her mother helps her spell the words. She writes them out and draws the pictures.
The amazing thing is that the stories are actually pretty good. They have a beginning, middle and an end, etc. The pictures are precious.
She knows how to write out and do simple math problems. Addition and subtraction of one place. 4+5=9 kind of stuff.
She is getting ready to start reading on her own pretty much any day now. She read through “The Foot Book” by Dr. Suess the other day but some of that was remembering the words from having it read to her.
She often gets upset because we are not explaining the world to her fast enough. We went by the local thrift store the other day and she wanted to stop. I told her it was closed. She really wanted to go and asked why it was closed. I told her that it closed so the people who worked there could go home to their houses and be with their families. She had not understood that the people who worked there didn’t live there as well until that moment.
She said in very accusitory tone, “You have to tell me these things! I’m just a little kid!”
Both of my kids (Stephanie, 6½ and David, nearly 4) have above-average cognitive and language skills; David is quite remarkable in his ability to do anything once he has seen it done once by someone else; we have to hide the TV remote as he knows how to reprogram the channels; when he was 2½ we installed a lock on the stereo cabinet because he would switch it on, put in a CD and play it, then turn up the volume.
The other day my wife took a heap of wet laundy out of the washing machine and was taking it out to the line; David asked “aren’t you going to put these other clothes in the machine mummy?” (pointing to a pile of unwashed clothes); she told him that she would do it when she came back in.
While she was still hanging out the wet clothes, he came out and told her it was OK 'cause he had done it - she went back in to find that he had loaded the machine, put the powder in the drawer, selected the right program and started the cycle. He’s not even 4 years old!! (we have to watch him constantly - he hasn’t yet tried frying eggs or boiling the kettle, but it’s hard to explain safety to an excitable kiddie).
Stephanie is more of a philosopher; a while ago we were out driving and she asked me if it was possible that the car was staying still and the earth was simply turning beneath us.
My 7th grader will be taking the ACT in Feb, to help decide what programs are best suited for him. (Yeah, the genius is the kid who got suspended last week for fighting! Obviously not TOO smart!)
The HS freshman (flute) made the top HS band (of 3), the 7th grader (trumpet) is in the 8th grade band, and the 6th grader (clarinet/alto sax) is in the 7th grade and jazz bands. Last night the 3 of them were working out an arrangement of Variations on a Shaker Tune/ Simple Gifts.
Perhaps most wonderful, yesterday one of them emptied the drier and folded a load of clothes, and another took out the garbage - without being asked!
My darling, gorgeous little sister Becca is 13, at a private school (she wanted to go) in St Louis, absolutely boy crazy, and getting into rugby.
This creates some great discussions on the phone.
“So, then, the really hot guy on the other team, like, tried to block me twice!”
“What did you do then, Bec?”
“I hit in him the chest until he fell over and ran by him. But I was pretty much focused on Kevin. You know, Kevin, the guy from my math class who SOOO cool? He’s a wuss! I hit him the the head twice and the back and he just fell down and let me by…”
I can’t wait til she gets to high school. She’s too much fun.
My son jsut got chosen to be in the 4th grade Honors choir and they will sing at an assembly for veterans Day.
He was picked with 3 other kids out of his class of 20!