Happy Birthday Daniel / Welcome Joshua

So the revised the due date (12th) came and went. Since he wasn't coming and he wasn't coming, we started to wonder if the original due date was more accurate after all. I was really hoping to have Daniel's birthday and the new baby's birthday at least a week apart. I finally began to think that I was forever going to be that big and live with sciatica.

So Daniel's birthday and due date came (Saturday the 22nd). We had a fun birthday for him. He received the watch he had been wanting so badly and all the neighborhood kids came over for cake (that way I'm not tempted to finish it).

Rebecca, Daniel, and his motorcycle cake

Steven accompanied "Happy Birthday" on his guitar

Then Sunday morning at about 2:00 I was woken up by "a real contraction." I had them rather consistently for a while at about 10 minutes apart. They eventually tapered off and I got some more sleep. But this was the day. Tawni (sis in law) and Sage (sister) came over with all sorts of food. (Tawni left us with 3-4 dinners. Bless that woman!!!) But I wasn't moving quite fast enough and she had to go and rescue Hyrum from his National Guard Drills. Sage stayed though and kept the kids occupied as my contractions became more intense. We called the midwife at about 6:00 and she headed over. Our baby was born at 9:26pm.

He weighed 9lb 4oz and 22 in long. Our biggest yet. With this and a few other indicators we figure he was over due after all. Daniel didn't get him for his birthday, but they are now birthday neighbors.

Steven had all the kids calling him Joshua and since Mom and Dad never really came up with anything else, he won. We finally decided to name him Joshua Moroni Johnson.

Naturally our camera decided to loose itself so we have only a few cell phone pictures. Rebecca has misplaced the phone and I don't want to wait any longer to post this. I'll have to add them later. sorry. Here is one to keep you going.

A Cool New Resource: fun with math

We have found a fun, new math resource.

I first heard about Times Tables the Fun Way by Judy Liautaud when I visited the Montessori school in Lakeside. Math facts for 3's, 4's, 5's, 6's, 7's and 8's have a fun story to help the children remember it. I looked it up and Judy Liautaud has also written a similar book for the addition facts. My budget would only fit in one, so I decided to start with Addition the Fun Way.

Daniel and Isaac are really picking up on these. Each number is a cartoon character for example, 3 is a bee: the 3 bee. 6 is always sick. Some are silly, but others are pretty good. Either way, it seems to work.

Memorizing math facts are important, yet I also do not like the idea of memorizing by rote without understanding the concepts behind it. So we have also pulled out the dominoes. We have a set of double nine dominoes which are perfect for generating addition problems from 0 - 9. So we pick out a domino at random, say it the problem, maybe write it on the white board and then talk about the story. Then they count the dots to make sure we are right. It is fun to see.

Another fun game we have started playing is Addition War very similar to traditional War. We use a stack on number cards with each player having half of the cards. To play, the players each pull off the top two cards from the deck and lay them on the table. The two cards are added together. The player whose card add up higher get all the cards on the table. Much funner than timed sheets.