seeing decimals

A short summary of today:

Slow start due to time change and late night and 5 yo getting his sleepover at grandma's which now led to tears from 7 yo. Eventually 7 yo davened and started off with Rosetta Stone. By now, he overshot 5 yo, but that kid does not know it yet. I would like to keep him in the dark a bit longer, as I'm worried that this fact will sap his motivation. Then we did art: drawing the same object using only straight lines or only curved lines. 7 yo inferred that man-made objects are mostly straight lines, but natural objects require curvy ones.

Then he chose math. I ordered scale and metric graduated cylinder, so for now we skipped to money math. He was on the ball, just kept doing page after page after page. I thought he would finish the book today. He got to dollars and his book brilliantly used decimal, which came up last week in Beethoven's Wig (Watch me skate. Gimme a ten, oh what, only 9.2? C'mon, at least 9.6). So I showed him how the decimal separates dollars from cents. He kept it up for close to 45 minutes, till 5 yo was dropped off. Then all kids went outside to blow bubbles and dig in the dirt.

After lunch, 2 yo napped. 7 yo asked to do megillah, so we started on the 4th perek. His head was not in it though. He did not remember what medina means, even though we saw it so many times before and he was translating it. He also didn't ask anything, only what sackcloth looks like. I happened to have Basmati rice in a burlap sack, so he felt that and got the general idea. Overall, he was more busy dividing up 17 pesukim in half, to do half now and half later and aim for another siyum. That way we went over even/odd numbers again.

Then he did Lashon Hatorah and spelling. I wanted him to read some Jewish history from the library book, but he claimed that he already browsed it, and it is boring. I let it be.

5 yo did Rosetta Stone. followed by math. I'm waiting for base ten blocks to explain counting to 100. ( it is a second grade book, after all). He was able to group tens on the page into one hundred, but I'm not sure how much of it is sticking. I do not want him just to learn how to answer the questions in the book without understanding what it means.

After math, he did handwriting and ketiva. Today was letter p, which, for some reason, was hard for him. He kept telling me how it is confusing with d, and I kept reinforcing starting it on the line and then diving down and curving on top. In ketiva, he did not recognize aleph. More and more practice, to build up more and more skills. For Yesh Lanu Lama, there were questions to answer. I let him read the questions and tell me the answers to write down. That he did with flying colors.

Then they watched Nova documentary about making things smarter. ( I'm glad that Dinosaur Train stage is over, for now). They only got about 20 minutes before it was time for gymnastics. After, we stopped at the library. They had more Mythlopedia books for 7 yo; he opened them in the car and got lost in ancient Greece. I had to force him to get pajamas on so that he would realize that he's hungry for dinner.

As I was tucking boys in, 5 yo asked (again) what time he can get up in the morning. 7 yo suddenly announced that two dots on the digital clock are like a decimal. It's clicking!