Living Math at Work

My son purchased a computer game after looking for several days for something he may want. I love his process he goes through as it is such a frugal one that is so natural to him! He looks and looks between computer games, Xbox live games, and even books. He looks at Walmarts, Game Stop and online at Amazon.com, and after each look takes a day or two to THINK about it and see if it is really something he wants. He does not part with his money easily, and takes his time with the purchases he does decide to make.

When he finds something, he calculates the shipping costs or if there will be a sales tax, in order to make sure he has enough money and will not have to ask us to cover the difference if he by chance goes over. He makes sure he will not go over!

On this particular purchase, he went for a computer game which he received fairly quickly through the mail after he purchased it from Amazon.com. When he went to download it, he found he needed something downloaded in order to even run the game. Well this download has tons of updates it needed to do as it has never been downloaded on his computer. This is taking a painfully long time, we are talking DAYS to download! 

Each day he has been calculating gigabytes and estimating when the update may be complete.  He looks at how much gigabytes is downloading a day and comparing that with the percentage of how much it says it is downloading.


My daughter on the other hand has been using a lot of math skills that started with our grocery shopping endeavor. She knows her food has to last 2 weeks before our next shopping trip where she again will receive $50 for a 2 week period of food, making her own food choices. At the store, she was keeping a close eye on her purchases, determining how much more she could get, how many meals she needed and if she had enough for some snacks.

As we are completing week one after shopping, she was fully aware of going through her food a little too fast. She really started going through and thinking of all the meals she had left, how long it needed to last, did she have enough dinners? Enough Lunches? Cupcakes can be considered a meal, right?  How many days can a person go without food? How hungry will I be if I run out?  Wow I should have enough! ( after talking out all her meals left, and counting in the fact mom will cook family dinners on the weekends giving her 2 free meals!)

The other thing that happened this week is that we bought a brand new push lawn mower with a grass catcher on it. The neighbor then put their riding mower out by the road for sale, a highly used riding lawn mower.

This had her asking how much we spent on ours, so she could determine which would be the better buy.  Okay, well ours was $220 and the neighbors is for sale at $250. Ours is a little cheaper but requires much more work to mow the yard. But we saw how much the riding mower was breaking down all last summer...........highly used..........all the way around she determined OURS was the better buy.

While they do not always figure out math in a manner of how it is taught in the public school system, they are still highly capable of reasoning out problems in their own way.

Living Math gives them a reason to  figure out because it is real and in the moment, it is not separated from life. When you separate math from living, it becomes some abstract affair that just does not make sense for many no matter how many times someone tries to show you. Living Math gets them excited  to figure it out because it actually applies to something they want to know right here, in the moment.

It was a beautiful thing to watch as I got to "hear" them without interfering figure it out.

Positive Partnering

Part of our journey here is having a partnership connection with our children, where they have a voice and their needs not only are allowed to be heard,  but something done about it as well! Children are people too,  with dreams, goals, desires and needs, just as adults do. In our journey through life in our home, we recognize this as a primal need and try to help them fulfill these wants and needs. Sometimes it may take a little while to recognize that members of the family may be getting ignored and an awakening with awareness brings it to light.

For the last couple months, it has been easy for me to see every single second of the day as amazing, miraculous moments throughout the whole day. I have a blazing spark  within,  huge smile on my face, oozing positive energy and just  screaming to everyone how awesome life is! Well of course I am, January of this year I was so close to Deaths Door I could see the light coming out from  under  the door! Since then I have been healing, gaining my old self back and have hope for a long future again.........therefore everyday I wake up, alive and well it is a friggin fabulous day where my heightened senses see every minute second as a miracle, no matter what our current situation is at the  moment! I was actually irritated with family members moping around, irritable, complaining about the mundanely and financial circumstances. I would look at them in amazement and say HEY I AM STILL HERE, LIFE IS AWESOME!

Of course they are grateful I am doing good and on my way to recovery, but this did not stop them from  being unhappy about certain areas of our life, especially hubby and  our youngest daughter who are very social creatures that have a need for adventure, getting out of the house and being explorers to find new things to keep that wonder and magical part of life inside of them.

So the other day, as I recognized these unhappy feelings within them, we had a pow wow and I asked each family member, what 3 things would they change about our family or their life, would they change if they could change it right now.

My 15 year old son says he is happy the way things are, not sure if I totally believe this, as he has always had a hard time relaying emotions and feelings. He gets upset if you try to get him to talk about how he feels, however he is a lone wolf who does not like talking to people, and is a computer geek who does not mind staying home a lot, much like myself. I am no computer geek of course, but I LOVE staying home!

My daughter very easily came up with 3 things:   For us to be more active as a family, playing games and doing things ( this really fell to the wayside when my health went into the toilet)

She also wants her own money,  and go places and do things with kids her age.

Hubby wanted to get out of the 9-5 crap job world,  have a residual income coming in and have me Cancer Free.

Myself?  I definitely want to get more active and involved with the kids again, have hubby  home and remove the word NO almost completely from our vocabulary!

We brainstormed on different ideas how to accomplish these goals and how to make those changes.

For example I know, we say no much of the time because we always have this feeling of "lack and no money"

We want to change that from a "No, we don't have  the money" to a "Well, HOW can we accomplish this?" then brainstorm and problem solve. Me and hubby both recognised this almost the same day, and know that for awhile we DID do this but then life took over and we fell back into old habits.

These are real feelings, desires and needs from the youngest child to the oldest adult in the house, none are less important than another. Each should be validated and explored and nurtured to make  happen.

I look forward to working on these throughout May! When we make these changes, we will come back and ask again as people grow and change, their needs will have to be revisited on a regular basis.

Happy Partnering is a beautiful thing!

Radical Vanilla Muffins

Yesterday, my daughter asked if she could make some muffins, and wanted to know if you could make just plain vanilla muffins. I said SURE!

We did not have muffin cups, so decided to make the batter and put in a 13 x 9 greased pan.

She said she did not want me sitting on the couch answering questions ( she did this several times when I was couch bound) but rather wanted to know if I was up to being in the kitchen with her, to actually be involved helping with her creation. I said SURE!

Since I have a basic muffin mix I use from my head, I helped her with that but she decided on what type she wanted to make ( pure vanilla), decided she wanted to color it with dyes and layer it, decided she wanted to use an icing and things like that. She originally was going to use cinnamon too, but decided against that.

I told her muffins usually do not have icing so originally decided against that. However with only 2 Tablespoons of vanilla in the mix, they came out a tad on the plain side, so for what was left, she made the icing.

Making the icing was a great learning experience for her because she has never made it before. I forgot to tell her to cream in the butter to the confectioner sugar and then add VERY LITTLE Milk!

So yeah, she added too much milk and had to keep adding confectioner sugar until it was an icing consistency. Since she did not cream the butter in, there are bits of butter showing in the icing.

However it made for a very enjoyable afternoon for the two of us! I loved seeing her confidence and creative spark.

After muffin making, she wanted me to watch a Documentary on Netflix called "Bully"

It was heartbreaking to watch, but then my daughter always seems to pick some very heavy topics to become aware of some very serious issues. It is on the other hand a wonderful thing to see how compassionate she is on these subjects.

It really was a great day, enjoying every minute of it!

Don't Limit a Child to Your Own Learning