September 2009 Archives

Black Spider Spitter Snakes

At least, I think that was the team name. It may have been "spinner snakes" in the minds of some. Here's the rowdy gang of teammates and fearless coach:

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This is Colin's second soccer season. Not only does he have a much better attitude, he's also running faster and becoming better at sending the ball where he wants to. He also understands the importance of defending your goal. A few times I've seen him run ahead of the other team to block their kicks toward the goal.

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Of course, he's still focused on getting the ball every time it goes out of bounds or through the goal. Occasionally this leads to serious battles with the other players.

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And the best part is, of course, the game-ending snack.

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Latah County Fair

Colin and Dad visited the Latah County Fair on a Thursday night. The previous weekend we drove to the fair over in Colfax. There we bought something like $18 in tickets. For an extra $2 we could have gotten the wristband. But it was good to have the tickets, so we had a reason to leave.

This time Dad spring for the wristband, even though its $25 here! I guess it was a good idea because Colin went on the big slide about 30 times. Each time he finished he handed his "blanket" to the attendant, then ran out to ask me if he could go again. "Yes, go again!" He'd run back to the attendant and get the blanket again and head up the stairs.

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Eventually I convinced him to try some of the other rides. He did the goofy antique cars a couple of times. He also went on the mini-coaster a couple times, until the attendant chided him for stepping off the ride the wrong way. oops. Its a bad feeling to see some creepy carney whisper something to your kid.

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After a while we went over to where the big rides are. The two of us rode the ferris wheel once. The carney allowed me to ride even though I didn't have a ticket or wristband. He was also particularly creepy when he asked Colin if he'd grown since last year. I guess it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he really remembered some of the kids he saw. After our ride there was a shift change. The new dude wouldn't let me ride for free, so C took a ride with a girl his age and her mother.

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"Jungle Madness" was his other favorite thing to do, perhaps because there were lots of other kids here too. It starts with a maze of mirrors, then goes up to the second level and down a curly slide. I was trying to get a picture of him coming down the slide. He thought it was so funny to have the flash go off and then look at the silly picture on the camera screen. We must have done that 20 times. Then, believe it or not, back to the big slide for about 15 more runs down.

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We ended the evening with a snow cone for Colin, a milkshake for Dad, and a phone call from Mom reminding us that it was a school night.

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Stuck In The Mud

Colin has been really enjoying a dice game called "Stuck In The Mud." It works like this: the player starts by rolling all the dice. Any 2's or 5's become stuck in the mud and are taken out. The remaining dice are added to the player's score. The player keeps rolling until all the dice are stuck.

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Normally you would play with about five dice, but we've been playing with eleven because we have so many cool dice to play with.

Its been really fun to watch his math skills improve in the couple of weeks that we've been playing.  Colin has been using the "Three Is A Magic Number" song to add up 3's and 6's quickly.  He's also become very good at creating groups of 10 (6+4 or 6+3+1).

Another variation of our game is that the game is never over.  Rather than playing to, say, 250 and declaring a winner, we just keep increasing our scores every time we play.  As you can see below, Colin is into the 3700's by now.

He loves keeping track of his score on his calculator.  He'll add up the dice in his head, and then add that number to his total score.

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I was a little surprised to sometimes see him use the calculator like this: if he rolls a 37, he might add it to his score by entering "+31+6."  Even more recently I've seen him add 6 by entering "+7-1."  Nifty!

Another great thing about this game is that it gives him plenty of writing practice!

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For the first few days we played, his score sheet was chaos. Scores were placed randomly on the page. Later he took to writing his score on successively smaller and smaller (not to mention dark purple) slips of paper that he would cut up. Also he liked to copy the shapes of the numbers shown on the calculator LCD display.

Then at some point I found myself writing his score and realized the lost opportunity. So I drew some short lines on a blank sheet and for a while we took turns writing his score.  Above you can see 3180 was the last time I wrote his score.

Starting around 3375 I made a terrible mistake.  He's been bringing home writing practice sheets from school and showed me how his teacher writes hearts around letters that she likes, and also gives smiley faces for good ones and sad faces for not-so-good ones.  I thought that was a neat idea, so when he wrote a truly excellent "5" I gave him a heart.  Well, it didn't take long before he was fishing for hearts and smileys on every score.   A few lines later he began to erase letters that didn't get a smiley and keep trying until they were good enough.  Whereas his turn used to take 15 minutes, now it was taking half an hour.

Then around 3263 I tried to explain that hearts and smileys were something special and you couldn't just get them every time.  Just like you can't have ice cream every day.  If you have ice cream every day, then its no longer a special treat.  So for his next few scores he found it really funny to intentionally write really bad numbers.  Eventually we sort of settled on about one smiley per line.  For some reason he likes to connect the smiles together with a line.

While I was at work today, he apparently became embarassed by his intentionally bad writing after 3263.  So he proceeded to cut it out of the page.  He wanted to glue it back together with the other side of the page showing.  Glue didn't work, but tape did!

Moonrise over the Palouse

Last night was a full moon. We visited Uncle Garry and Aunt Connie's farm to witness a Harvest Moonrise, take some pictures, and look through our telescope.

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Here's Colin checking out the moon through the telescope that Aunt Karen gave us:

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One more picture to share. Here is Garry's new combine resting on the ridge (taken before the moonrise).

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C Mugs first day of 'Kindergarten'

Colin is learning this semester at both White Pine Montessori School and Moscow Charter School, what a lucky, young scholar...

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