5 years + 3 months

Emily has had an inquisitive month.  Instead of asking the proverbial "Why?" all the time, she constantly asks, "How come?"  This is essentially the same thing, but it took me a while to figure that out and is taking me longer to get out of the habit of always trying to answer the question.  In addition to "How come?" we have also been inundated with math questions this month.  Like "What's 20 + 20?" or "What's 200 + 200?"  Then it moved on to multiplication, as in "How many is three fives?" or "What is four sixes?"  Emily is pretty good with addition/subtraction math facts up to 10, and if she doesn't have them memorized, she can easily count them out on her fingers.  Then just today, she matter-of-factually explained to me at lunch that "When you add hundreds you just take off the zeroes and look at the regular numbers.  That means 200 + 200 = 400."  Whew--I'm glad I don't have to answer that one again!  She also explained that "Zero means you start over again, like 10 to 20 to 30 in counting."  This latter fact she learned during calendar time at preschool today even though she can already easily count to 100.  The former one she figured out on her own while at the math center at preschool.  We might have a little Math Bee in our future! ;o)  (I was in 6th grade Math Bee.  Our school team went to the state competition, and I finished 5th overall in the individual competition.)

Emily has also become a super star helper this month.  She empties the silverware basket out of the dishwasher, dries the plastic containers, sets the table and feeds the fish every day, in addition to clearing her dishes and cleaning her room.  Last Saturday she sorted and "folded" three loads of laundry.  Today at lunch she cleared, rinsed and loaded almost all the dishes into the dishwasher.  She has been excellent about picking up toys and straightening rooms lately.  We're going to take all the help we can get because we know it probably won't last long!  Maybe all my organizing is rubbing off on her. ;o)

Emily still has a very vivid imagination.  The cardboard scenery regularly gets hauled up the stairs and serves all sorts of purposes.  If she's not teaching a class of some sort, she's organizing a competition.  For some reason, it's always the UNI team vs. Nebraska.  She's always on the UNI team, and we want the UNI team to win. :o)   I'm sure the competition thing comes from her current favorite PBS Kids show, Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman.  It's basically a game show for kids.  It's actually quite informative and amusing.

Among her large assortment of imaginary friends (Karen & Hannah have been the friends of the month), Emily also has a group of "teasy girls."  The teasy girls are the ones who misbehave or make mistakes or do things wrong.  This has brought up some good discussion points about how to treat/deal with other people who don't act/think the same way we do.  Maybe we won't have to deal with them for a while, though, because Emily informed me today that the teasy girls have been sent to Hawaii for seven years.  That's a bummer punishment!

I'll end this month's post with an observation that I can't believe it took me this long to figure out.  Lincoln has always been a cuddler, but Emily never was.  I think part of it is because she just can't sit still.  Seriously.  I've noticed this more while reading Magic Tree House books before bed.  She always has to be moving.  I call her a squirmy wormy.  I'm not sure how this plays out at preschool, but we might have some problems once we get to elementary school.

P.S. We are on Book #12 of the Magic Tree House series, and we both love it.  Emily already has the rest of the books scouted out, but I'm content to let them unfold one by one. :o)