Levi has been playing around with numbers again and it is really fun to watch and help him. He asked me about a week ago what happened below zero. Once I worked out what he was asking, I explained that the numbers could go in the negative direction as far as they could go in the positive (ie. forever). Since then his plus and minus sums are now a bit more interesting.
It started with things like 3 - 2 and about a day later it was things like 12 - 15. Then yesterday he started something else -2 - 5. You could watch the light go on in his eyes. He said;
"When you count forward with minus numbers, you are actually counting backward!"
It was a very pretty way of putting it and certainly an easy way to explain it, that I will use again. He has been happily playing with the numbers. I wish he would play with words a little more, but I can't have everything. He is actually reading better but I would love to see him get joy from it, the way I do. I am getting ahead of myself again. I mean really, he is just five, not twenty. Maybe at some point when it is easier for him, he will start finding joy in it.
He has been tired the last few days. School really takes it out of you! He has been a cranky butt and very fragile but between just going back to school and getting monster molars, I guess I can cut him a little slack. I have had the last few days off while he was at school, in the attempt to get the yard winterised but it has been raining constantly. It hasn't been hard enough to trap us in, but certainly hard enough to stop my doing any work with wet grass. The causeway has been running freely over by about 10cm but doesn't look like it is getting vicious any time soon.
Don't know if it will be of any encouragement to you or not, but Adam didn't read for pleasure until he was 16 years old, but now he is a voracious reader. He was always *capable* of reading, but he preferred other things. Once he decided he wanted to read on his own, though, he took off & that was it. Maybe Levi will be similar. I figure that as long as a child has the ability to read, the opportunity to read & exposure to books, eventually they'll want to do it on their own. :)
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