Week 33 - Tatami mats, Thirsty 6's and Giants

This is the new apartment in Tokyo for the Big Brother in college. His space is eight tatami mats large or 12 x 12. That's a big step up from the 9 x 9 (4 1/2 mats) dorm room he just moved from; he even has a bed long enough for his 6'6" self to sleep in. He ended up sharing an apartment with two girls that are from our home state. The world often turns out to be smaller and more connected than you think.

This week at school we started bumping against those multiplication tables again.

I've been letting CC use a reference chart of multiplication facts so that she can continue to be challenged in math without waiting for her to memorize those facts. She has been able to do quite a bit that way, including figuring out division with remainders, prime number factorization, and two digit-multiplication with carrying. This week, I gave her a copy of Times Tales to read through to supplement her math. I think she liked it because she was not only giggling while reading it, today in math when factoring 36, she lit up and said, "Oh, Thirsty Sixes! That is 6 x 6!"

I am currently reading the girls a book of Norse Mythology and Knight's Castle . This week the two disparate works both talked about giants. I love it when things like that happen because it give us good literary ideas to discuss. LB woke me up this morning and asked if I would read Jack and the Beanstalk to her. It is one of those great stories for children that not only let them run around with a "Fe Fi Fo Fum. I smell the Blood of and Englishman.", they also reassure children that the giants can be defeated by children.


“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” G.K. Chesterton