What we are using

15 September 2009

What is antagonize? It is a good opportunity.

This morning after cleaning a raspberry soda explosion off the wall, I finally settled down for a my cup of coffee. LB started setting up her little toy kitchen, and CC starting to try to see how quickly she could get her sister to go from a whine to an outburst. I asked to please not antagonize her sister.

CC: "What is antagonize?"
Me: "It's a good opportunity."

So I got up and dug out the student Thesaurus (note to self, I really do need a Dictionary). I showed CC how to look up words in the dictionary/thesaurus using the guide words. I also pointed out that it shows the parts of speech to help her with Mad Libs. She spent the next half hour reading the thesaurus. I remember doing that when I was a kid. Now she wants a dictionary for her birthday - a big one.

We were expecting thunderstorms for the afternoon so I packed up the Ray's math books and lunch and spent the next couple of hours at the park.

Right now they are trying to learn to Flamenco dance from an animated character on Kid Pix. Is that music, art or computer time? Does it matter? Probably not. Life around here just seems like a good opportunity to learn.

2 comments:

Wendy said...

I love this - what a great post! Hooray for big words that interest children in the dictionary and thesaurus. I loved the dictionary when I was a child too. AND encyclopedias. Gosh, I miss those.

Flamenco dancing! How did that go?

Karen said...

The Flamenco dancing was great - we followed up by hubby finding them some cool videos of real dancers. They decided that they love the twirly dresses best. They did over an hour of dancing but prefer to make up their own.

I used to read the encyclopedias too.