27, 28, 29 ...
The kids love playing outside. I love putting them outside. They get exercise and fresh air, and I enjoy a few minutes where they can’t empty the kitchen drawers. It’s a win-win.
Unfortunately, it’s been hot in Iowa the past few weeks. It’s not the insane type of hot you find south of here in, say, Missouri, but we’re still enduring temperatures well into the 90’s with high humidity. It’s not much fun to take the kids outside when we return to the house cranky, sweaty, and more likely to develop cancerous lesions. So we avoid the heat of the day and step outside only after the sun droops in the sky and the temperature slips to a more comfortable reading in the upper 80’s.
This leaves us about 15 minutes to spend outside before bedtime. The kids’ activity of choice is playing on their swing set. Since the slide is still scaldingly hot from the day of sunshine, and there’s not much point in climbing the ladder if you’re not going to slide down, we spend the time swinging. I set Abbie in the traditional banana swing, the boys in a couple of baby swings, and stand behind them pushing.
Abbie needs constant pushing. That’s a shame, because her momentum could keep her swinging long enough for me to do yard work a minute at a time. That’s enough time to remove some of the more evolved specimens choking out the vegetables in my garden a few feet from the swings.
In spite of this, I gave everyone a push last night, and left the equipment for a minute. The Cubs were playing a pivotal mid-July game, and I needed to turn on the radio to listen. Predictably, Abbie jettisoned off the swing and ran after me, screaming in anger that I abandoned her. With the radio blaring the play-by-play, I returned her to her swing and resumed pushing.
Ordinary swinging doesn’t benefit the child much mentally or physically. There’s a bit of a thrill as the child experiences slight changes in g-force, a little core body workout as the child maintains balance, but otherwise it’s as substantive as a Paris Hilton news story. We’ve added an educational component to the process by counting as we swing. Abbie usually takes the lead, shouting “one” at her designated starting point, and I repeat. Somewhere usually in the teens, she stops counting by herself, and I have to prod her before each number with “what’s next?”
We’ve ironed out a few gaps in her numerical sequences this way. She used to stop at 20, probably because few counting books go beyond 20. After drilling the number 21 into her head, she finally repeated “21” back to me. I encouraged her to keep counting, and was thrilled that she grasped counting fundamentals by continuing with 22, 23, etc. I was less thrilled when she arrived at “twenty-ten, “ but I give her credit for recognizing a pattern and sticking with it.
After I finally taught her that 30 follows 29, she had trouble continuing. She wanted to count by tens, saying “30, 40, etc.” This little bit of laziness is probably tied to my little bit of laziness when I counted to 100 by tens in the one counting book we own that has a 100 page.
After much drilling and encouragement, she’s learning her numbers. She can count fairly high with minimal corrections from me, usually limited only by her attention span. Last night she lost interest somewhere in the 50’s, as did I. I focused on pushing the kids for a minute, and was surprised to hear her pick up again at “56.” That was unusual since she normally starts at one, or at least somewhere in the single-digits to give her room before reaching that tricky 29-30 exchange. I went with it for a minute, but was confused when she didn’t count higher. I then realized that she was repeating what she heard on the radio. The announcers, desperate for something to fill time, were commenting that on this day in history, Joe DiMaggio’s streak of hits in consecutive games reached 56. So there’s another way that she’s learning while swinging.
Unfortunately, it’s been hot in Iowa the past few weeks. It’s not the insane type of hot you find south of here in, say, Missouri, but we’re still enduring temperatures well into the 90’s with high humidity. It’s not much fun to take the kids outside when we return to the house cranky, sweaty, and more likely to develop cancerous lesions. So we avoid the heat of the day and step outside only after the sun droops in the sky and the temperature slips to a more comfortable reading in the upper 80’s.
This leaves us about 15 minutes to spend outside before bedtime. The kids’ activity of choice is playing on their swing set. Since the slide is still scaldingly hot from the day of sunshine, and there’s not much point in climbing the ladder if you’re not going to slide down, we spend the time swinging. I set Abbie in the traditional banana swing, the boys in a couple of baby swings, and stand behind them pushing.
Abbie needs constant pushing. That’s a shame, because her momentum could keep her swinging long enough for me to do yard work a minute at a time. That’s enough time to remove some of the more evolved specimens choking out the vegetables in my garden a few feet from the swings.
In spite of this, I gave everyone a push last night, and left the equipment for a minute. The Cubs were playing a pivotal mid-July game, and I needed to turn on the radio to listen. Predictably, Abbie jettisoned off the swing and ran after me, screaming in anger that I abandoned her. With the radio blaring the play-by-play, I returned her to her swing and resumed pushing.
Ordinary swinging doesn’t benefit the child much mentally or physically. There’s a bit of a thrill as the child experiences slight changes in g-force, a little core body workout as the child maintains balance, but otherwise it’s as substantive as a Paris Hilton news story. We’ve added an educational component to the process by counting as we swing. Abbie usually takes the lead, shouting “one” at her designated starting point, and I repeat. Somewhere usually in the teens, she stops counting by herself, and I have to prod her before each number with “what’s next?”
We’ve ironed out a few gaps in her numerical sequences this way. She used to stop at 20, probably because few counting books go beyond 20. After drilling the number 21 into her head, she finally repeated “21” back to me. I encouraged her to keep counting, and was thrilled that she grasped counting fundamentals by continuing with 22, 23, etc. I was less thrilled when she arrived at “twenty-ten, “ but I give her credit for recognizing a pattern and sticking with it.
After I finally taught her that 30 follows 29, she had trouble continuing. She wanted to count by tens, saying “30, 40, etc.” This little bit of laziness is probably tied to my little bit of laziness when I counted to 100 by tens in the one counting book we own that has a 100 page.
After much drilling and encouragement, she’s learning her numbers. She can count fairly high with minimal corrections from me, usually limited only by her attention span. Last night she lost interest somewhere in the 50’s, as did I. I focused on pushing the kids for a minute, and was surprised to hear her pick up again at “56.” That was unusual since she normally starts at one, or at least somewhere in the single-digits to give her room before reaching that tricky 29-30 exchange. I went with it for a minute, but was confused when she didn’t count higher. I then realized that she was repeating what she heard on the radio. The announcers, desperate for something to fill time, were commenting that on this day in history, Joe DiMaggio’s streak of hits in consecutive games reached 56. So there’s another way that she’s learning while swinging.
posted by Matt at
11:03 PM
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