May 20, 21...pet, excretory system

May 20, 2009


P had a thing with his excretory system today.
In the morning while I was working on the lappy.
He stirred but he didn't get up and say good morning at all.
SO I checked if he was upset or something only to find out something
wet beside him. Uh-oh..I mentioned the wet thing and he said,
"I made a mistake." And after that, tried to bury his face in his hands.
So we had an early wash coz of that.

Later that night when I got home from school, I found the toilet
unflushed with something. So I asked P if he pooped today and he said yes.
This is a first that he did not bother anybody with it.
The father was surprised coz he had no idea about it. Upon further questions,
it turned out that the son just did it all by himself. Asked if what was the DD doing
at that time, son said he was asleep. SO the little boy simply pulled his undies and
went back to what he was watching. No washing (good thing it's a dry thing so not much
skid marks) and flushing. Gross! But looking at it in a way, I am just glad of his try
of independence. Yet, still got a few part to iron out.

A day with P's excretory system.

May 21, 2009

Last week, sometime around May 14 or 15, our dog got out of the fence and did not come back.
Hubby tried to make some story but I'm not just in the mood to put in writing just now.

Anyway, my folks woke us up today with the news that they found the dog around the neighboring vacant lot.
The big lot is quite like a forest still and fenced with barbed wire.
They saw the dogs head trying to get out of it but since the space was too small,
the poor dog got stuck. They tried to get her out but he rans away from them.
My folks thought about bringing my son to there to coax the dog out.
Good thing is when we got there, she did recognize us. After a few tries and hesitation,
the dog finally got out and went home with us.

Our dog is finally back home, but the thing is we lost her dog dish.;)
I am quite relieved that she's back home and safe. I did feel very bad that she was out in the wild for
almost a week. Ah, I think that was Friday. Almost a week indeed.

I have yet to evaluate my son's reaction and other stories
around this disappearance and homecoming.

Volcanoes for Science

May 12

Teaching moment came when P asked how volcanoes work when I got home last night.
He was just looking at some photo form the Father's pc and wanted to know more about volcanoes.
This isn't the first time that he asked about it so even though I was already tired and sleepy,
I started searching for some resources online. I was actually looking for neat power point but
most I saw did not suit what I needed. Instead, I was able to find some videos that can suffice.
The discovery page that I found was what one cool place. We were able to generate how a volcano
will look like when erupting depending on the amount of gas present or the viscosity of the lava.
The vocabulary words didn't exactly contain the viscosity just yet, as I think it was bit too
technical for a 4 year old. We basically just covered active, sleeping or dormant and extinct or dead.
Extinct was not a new word for him since he encountered it before when he played in one pc game about
endangered and extinct creatures. For this volcano lesson, kinds of volcanoes according to shape;
shield, stratovolcano and cone.

After the volcano lesson, we did a fish origami. No relation at all with it. ;(

But during his free time, he wanted to paint. This time, he painted a volcano eruption. People are waiting,
lava flowed out and some people died because of it.

Hmm..I smell the rice burning now.
Oh no!

Lego blocks for the Fingers and Brain

The Lego set that P got when he turned four has been unused for a while. It sat in the box untouched in his playroom as he was contented with some small toys out. Surprisingly, he found it again tonight and started to make his own designs. Previously, he would always lean on the pictures that went along in the box. But tonight, he tried to do his own without any help. The imagination is better as he announced to make a restaurant set, all by himself. He was absorbed in the process for almost an hour. It sure was an improvement in my opinion.

Sporadic Math

In my quest to find some help in answering my school homework yesterday, I stumbled on some nice Math sites perfect for my little tutee.

It was a gold mine of activities and ideas for our Math lesson. I almost gave up on this subject but having found this site inspired me one more time to continue on. This one has the basic and leveled activities and really, a gold mine.

After P requested if he can play around with the keyboard but was refused coz F was taking a nap, the math gold mine was in line. The about-to-cry-face looked a bit better and gradually turned into a hopeful one. His face lit up and after a few more minutes, we were into the activities.

We covered the problem solving on arranging stuff with the simple hints given. First one was the cake (it covers the fraction concept of same, half, or equal.) Hmmm..better do it in a bullet point.

Activity

• cake (concept on fraction, equal, same, etc.)
• balloon (concept on colors, counting, a bit of graph, the words most, and few)
• crown jewels (concept of shapes termed as "jewels")
  
• train cars (concept on the words before, after, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th)
• sequencing picture (although he missed the dog burying bone thing again)
• time sequencing (he missed the time kids go to school, he answered kids go to school at 3 and goes home at 8 pm)

Points to work on:

• digital clocks vs. analog clocks
• sequence of things that happened everyday
• review the 1st, 2nd, etc., more exercise on that
• do some homemade drawings and letting him finish it before answering

Some more time and follow up on these things we should try again.

Measurement, anyone?

For the past two weeks that Teacher Mommy had resolve to get back to numbers, measurement lesson is what TM tried. TM prepared some real things for P to measure and put in a table. It took us a couple of days to finally finish the page coz it wasn't really very interesting for him. We finally finished the table yesterday, (it wasn't really a lot) but it took a bit of time. TM still has to take another shot at that next time. We were bounded with just a 6 inch paper ruler this time so perhaps we'll try a longer one next. Something that he can actually feel more enthusiasm in measuring.

TM has to get back to the drawing board for that lesson.
Uhmm..now that it occur to TM, since Mom is planning to make a pizza crust, perhaps we can try another unit of measurement this time. Off to the cupboard now.

Oops! Another one, an extension on the astronomy thing last week. Found some nice sites with ppt presentation and lots of cool photo slides for P. Started it two nights ago, but it's quite long so we're taking our time.

Street Astronomy 2009

Based on the stuff Teacher Mommy has heard from the short program on the opening of the event and read a bit on the online website of the event, 2009 was designated by the UN as Astronomy year. Why? This year marks the 400 years anniversary of Galileo using the first telescope ever and ?th hundred year that the first book on astronomy was ever published. (TM was really not very good in remembering numbers, you see.) Nonetheless, it was an event marked off on the calendar days before it. Right after I saw the poster around our street.

I can write a long entry on the things that happened but as usual, this will be just a quick report. The narrative will be for next time.

There was a short shadow storytelling on local sky mythology before the actual "star show." It isn't just astronomy, it's also local literature.










This was just 2nd night of the show but we still had to wait in line for more than 30 minutes.










The initial photo exhibit of some photos taken by national astronomy enthusiasts.
















This looks like out of an astronomy lab at school. (Not my school, though.) The nice guy explaining how the moon rotates around the earth, showing the phases of the moon. I really like this part but unfortunately, the team after us were a bit noisy that I didn't get to listen very well.
I do hope P will remember even just a fragment of this set up though.
















It was hard to take a picture and at the same time assist P as he take a peek of the moon. ;)
Hmm... the queue that we have to endure might seem worth it as we see P highly involved with the things around him.

We went home at around 11 pm. A bit late for the little one, but definitely worth it.
















Some nice sites here and here about astronomy.

PSU Museum

Palawan History is at the Museum