Pedigreed Housewife World

A few weeks ago I went to a meeting at the kids’ school about the Kindergarten Readiness Test or KRT.  Apparently this is a mandatory test in Ohio (not sure what other states do it too) that my oldest will need to take next year in order to go into the Kindergarten program at her school.  I’m not super worried about Briana passing the test, not just because I think that Briana is a smart little girl, but also because she goes to a school that has bothered to host a parent meeting on the topic, which leads me to believe that they are doing all that they can to prepare the kids for this test.  That being said, while I don’t believe in drilling my kids, I do believe in preparing them. So after the meeting I googled the test and soaked up everything I could find out on it.  The best resources were actually on the state site: http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=1366&ContentID=3930&Content=117686 Therein they said

I usually let the kids decide what our weekly activity is, but not this week. Briana wanted to learn how a car worked, but I told her that we were doing something different today.    It’s holiday time and everywhere we go we see hot chocolate and apple cider and then the kids have a fit when we come home and I say that they have to drink water.   I decided that I was going to teach them about why we need to stay hydrated in hopes that they will then clamor for water over other options…or more realistically that they at least understand why water is a good choice. I start out by telling the kids that our bodies are made up of 60% water.   Bree laughs thinking that I am joking.    I tell her that really more than half of your body is water.   She tells me that she thinks we are mostly bone actually, and I tell her that both are true.   She needs proof that there is water inside of us so I ask her - when we’re running around or playing what comes out on our heads.   Sweat.   Yep,

It’s that time of year again – the Holidays.   My family celebrates Christmas and this being the first year that the girls really seem to understand that Santa is coming, I thought that it would be a good time to make sure that they know the true Christmas story.   Both of the kids, when asked why we celebrate Christmas, will say that it is Jesus’s birthday.   Well, Abby might say “Jesus’s birthday party” but close enough, so we have a decent starting point.   I want to tell them more about Jesus’s birth day. We have unpacked all of the Christmas decorations and the kids are very much interested in the nativity sets which right now are all sitting on one table awaiting placement around the house.   I had planned to do the Christmas lesson as a storytelling/writing lesson, thinking that having Briana caption Abby’s pictures would solidify the story for both girls, but the fascination with the nativity sets gave me another idea.   I could use the nativity sets, which usually sit

I flew to a girl’s weekend last week and since then the kids have been asking a lot of questions about flight.  In fact they’ve been begging for a “flying experiment”.  Today we’re “finally” going to talk about how things fly in the air. When the kids get up from their naps they refuse their usual snack and half hour of tv to get straight to the experiment.  I love the enthusiasm.  Since I know that they have been thinking about flying for a while now, I asked them why they think a plane stays up in the air.  “Because that’s what flying means” Briana tries.  I hand them foam airplanes (courtesy of Arby’s happy meals from some time ago) to get them thinking about the parts of the planes.  Then I ask again the question in a more specific way – What PART of the plane keeps it up in the air?  Briana looks down at the plane in her hands and says “The Wings!” Abby is playing with her plane already and saying, “flap flap” as she flies her plane.  I tell Abby that birds have to

So I can’t take credit for today’s activity.  My kids are hooked on a tv show called Sid the Science Kid and after each episode they insist that we repeat the experiment ourselves.  I thought I’d share this one because the kids have been talking about it non-stop all week. Sid was teaching the kids about smell and how the molecules travel through the air and into our noses and that’s how we smell things.  The nice thing about following Sid is that the kids have already learned the basics, so we can just have fun with it.  Today we’re doing a smell test to see if the molecules from different foods can travel up to our noses and tell us what the food is without seeing it. I had mini potting cups leftover from when we planted our herbs, strawberries, and tomatoes on Earth day so I decided to use those.  Into each one I placed a different item – garlic (which replaced cinnamon in round 1), coffee grounds, chocolate, peanut butter, and grapefruit. I chopped up the item t

I just finished reading a book called ‘Moonwalking with Einstein’ by Joshua Foer for my other pet project, www.readerroundtable.com .   The book is about how Foer, a journalist, set out to understand and report on the US and World Memory Competitions and ended up winning the US Memory Championship and setting a US record in speed cards.   In it he states that memory is the “seat of our values and source of our character” (p. 269) It also stipulates, in defense of rote memorization in schools, that you must have memorized facts to apply them and that in applying them you learn.   I.e . you can’t learn without memorizing.   So I thought we should work on our memories this week.   (By the way, my one and only Reader Roundtable plug – if you want to talk about how children learn and the benefits of rote memorization in schools and/or any other aspect of the value of memorizing, log in and join our Roundtable book club discussion on Nov 16 th at 9pm EST on the website’s forums (

Briana has been asking me to show her how to read a real map for 2 weeks now.   Last week was her 4 th birthday and in all of the preparations I did not plan an activity for the week – the first time since I started the blog that I didn’t do an activity (except holidays and vacations).   While she was happy with new toys to play with, Briana was still angry that we didn’t do an activity.   She made me promise on the way to school on Monday morning that we would definitely do a map activity after naptime.   I’m happy that she’s thirsty for new knowledge. When the kids get up from their naps, I uphold my end of the promise and am ready to teach them how to read a real map.   They, however, insist that Barbie and Ken need new clothes on before we can start.   Apparently, learning about maps is a black tie affair in Barbie’s world.   Now we’re ready. Directions The first thing we do is to learn what directions are on a map.   I draw a star on the dry erase side of their ease