ohginnyfan | bits and bobs...

I am, at the very least, a bit more cheerful today than I was yesterday. Joshua brought home papers yesterday, and they were all "decent". One C -- the rest were A's and B's. That was a good thing. Both boys had a bunch of homework yesterday -- Josh had more than Matt, primarily because Josh has a band meeting tonight, plus choir, so he won't have time to complete anything due on Friday. He has to turn in a rough draft of his Amphibian report on Friday to be checked, and he hadn't started it as of yesterday (he had the research, just nothing written). Yeah...he didn't budget very well (report was assigned two weeks ago).

Matt is doing remarkably well with most of his assignments. He has a ton of work to do, but he can do most on his own, with very little help. The one subject he's having issues in is Social Studies and it has to do with Maps and Map reading. He can't get the N-S-E-W concept down. And we've been also working on Latitude/Longitude Northern/Southern hemisphere and Eastern/Western Hemisphere. The last about threw me for a complete loop. I'm looking at this map thinking, "huh? I don't remember this." I'm going to try to find some map activities on the 'net and have his tutor work with him on it. He has everything completely backwards.

On a good note, he did really well practicing his spelling words (usually a dreadful subject for him), and he did really well studying for his vocabulary test. Last week, Joshua aced his spelling pretest, so he didn't have to take the final test. He has his pretest today, and we are hoping he aces this one, so he doesn't have to take the final on Friday. He is a really good speller, so I would imagine he'll take very few final tests this year for spelling.

Today is the start of the school choir. I have two in it this year. Matt has decided to join, too. It meets an hour after school on Thursdays. Band starts in fifth grade, so Josh wants to join. He and Mike will be going to the band meeting tonight and finding out the details.

I've got my hpgw_otp number challenge written and back from aggiebell90. I hope to get it ready to post either today or tomorrow. I did two of them, and may just go ahead and post both (I had only one number). I hope to work on a couple other stories I've got brewing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi,
I randomly came across your journal and I wanted to offer you a quick geography tip that my father gave me when I was little. If you try to remember
N - E - S- W as Never - Eat - Shredded - Wheat and go clockwise around a map of North Am. N in the Arctic E the Atlantic S Mexico and W the Pacific it becomes easier to conceptualise something that is fairly abstract. An acronym can be pretty helpful and getting basic co ordinates down should help with the hemisphere stuff.
Hope you don't mind the totally unsolicited advice
B

I'm not sure if you'll ever see this, but thanks so much for the helpful hint. He's actually doing better, and the helpful hints people shared have definitely helped. I appreciate you taking the time to post it. It's definitely a keeper!

Hey Sus, I was going to give you the 'never eat shredded wheat' thing also. My beloved is terrible with directions (by her own admission) and uses that all the time. I'm the opposite, and have never needed it.

But I can give you a game. You can play this with your boys if you like. This was a competitive game at my churches boys club back in the 70's when I was growing up. It was called the "compass relay". You need two large pizza sized pieced of wood (or cardboard if you're doing this at home). You mark one into 16 wedges -- this is the game board. The other one you cut into 16 wedges. There is one labelled wedge for each point of the compass (N,E,S,W. NE,SE,SW,SE, NNE, NNW, SSW, SSE, and ENE,WNW,ESE,WSW). The North wedge is permanently fixed to the game board. The object then is to correctly arrange all the points of the compass on the game board.

We called this a relay because we would compete in this at club meets. We'd have several game boards set up. The boys would be lined up across the room in teams, and then at the whistle one boy from each team would run across the room to their table, pick a piece, and place it on the game board, run back and tag the next boy. The fast team would wind, with some sort of adjustment for each wrong piece (probably they added 5 seconds or some such for each wrong placement.)

We also did orientation, both outdoors with compasses, and indoors with maps.

Wow, I haven't thought of that game in years. Good memories.

...art

Hi Art!

Welcome to my journal! And thank you so much for the game idea! I can't do it as a relay for my boys yet (my youngest is only 4, and can't read yet *snort*), but I can use it as a puzzle for the older two and have them figure it out. I'll have to see if I can get some pizza circles from the local pizza place.

We also did orientation, both outdoors with compasses, and indoors with maps.

I'd be interested in hearing more about this too. I can read a map fairly well, but I'm rubbish if I have to give N-S-E-W driving directions ("go north on 565 and then go west on 466" - although I have gotten better over the years) This type of thing could be good for both the kids AND me.

Every heard of car rallies? You're given these instructions, like drive east for 20 telephone poles, then turn left, go precisely 6 mailboxes... etc etc.

Orienteering is sort of like that. You're put at a known starting point. Given a compass, a set of instructions, and a sheet to fill in. When you start you're given a direction, something like this... go ESE for 200 paces. Look for a oak tree beside a barbed wire fence. Once you get to it, there should be a marker or something to verify that you've found the right point. There will be a number, or symbol on the marker that you copy down on your sheet, to prove that you were there. Then you go to the next set of instructions: "no NNe for 300 paces, look for a Red rock beside a stream".... and so on. It's been SO long, I hope I'm remembering this correctly.

I would expect that boy scouts or any boys club still does something like this on their camp out trips. I should try googling "orienteering" some time.

...art

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Shredded Wheat

Re: Shredded Wheat

Re: Shredded Wheat