Fractions for Dinner

Wow...I have so much catching up to do on here!  We were out of town (in DISNEYWORLD!) for Spring Break (more on that later, I promise), and since then I've spent every waking moment that I wasn't dealing with the kiddos tagging stuff for a consignment sale. I thought I didn't have much to put in this sale, but I was so wrong... I'm hoping to purge most of the downstairs, after going down and seeing how much stuff we JUST DON'T NEED.  I purged it last year, but we still had a "need" for some of the younger age toys and books.  Now that little man is reading early chapter books, some of the other stuff is just going to have to go!

But, I digress.  After all, I know you are wondering how we had fractions for dinner?!!?

Those of you who know me in "real" life know that my hubby is a math teacher.  And, despite the fact that his students still guess he's 22 or 23, he's been teaching there for 11 years.  (You do the math on that one!).   Both of my kids, as a result, love math (so far!).  We've incorporated it naturally into our daily lives since they were tiny.  I loved math, too, so, even though my kids insist only Daddy can do math, I sneak it in there, too. :)  When we cook, we talk about measuring.  When we drive, we talk about distance.  We notice shapes in everything, and we count and add and subtract and multiply and divide whatever we see!  Yesterday, for homework, my daughter had a special vocabulary research project for her kindergarten teacher.  (A side note:  I am so thankful for my daughter's kindergarten teacher!!  We have considered home-schooling off and on, and I dreaded kindergarten.   Even though there are a lot of things I DON'T like about public school, her teacher has been great.  She's fairly new (2nd year), full of energy, sweet to the kids, and very welcoming of parents.   Also, my daughter is, at this stage, academically advanced.  Very.  We worried that she'd be bored and start to hate school.   Without being asked to, her teacher has tried throughout the year to give her extra projects to do and share with the class.   Not in the sense of extra busy work, but extension activities and "special" things that only she gets to do.  It has done wonders for my daughter's self-esteem and love of school.  Granted, phonics still bores her to tears, but she can tolerate it because she knows she has these other fun projects to do as well).  

Anyway...the vocabulary research project involves her looking up a word from something they've discussed in a story that week, preferably a word that she and the rest of the class don't already know.  She's supposed to look the word(s) up online (WITH PARENTAL SUPERVISION!) and find definitions, synonyms, examples, pictures, etc.  Then, the next day, she gets to present it orally for her class.   So far we've done "metro," "foreign," "conveyor," and "continent."  Daddy usually doesn't get involved in homework b/c he doesn't get home in time.  This week, though, the words were NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR...math!!  So, he plopped our daughter down at the table and starting slicing pears and cornbread for dinner.  The whole time, he was telling "fraction" stories and scenarios and helping her "discover" the meanings of the words, without actually telling her the answer.  By the time he finished, she and my 4 year old had an awesome grasp of fractions, for their ages, of course.  She was so excited to tell her class and teacher that we had "FRACTIONS FOR DINNER" last night.  Daddy even taught her how to make fraction pizzas on Smart notebook so that she could show the class.   Who knew Fractions could be so fun? :)