New books (Road to Reality, Motivation Breakthrough) and math manipulatives.
Gearing up for birthday week is fun. My latest Amazon.com order arrived yesterday, so I gave Vogon part of his gift early: a copy of Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe [review in Physics World].
I'm digging into Richard Lavoie's The Motivation Breakthrough with a pack of post-it flags and a notebook. So far there's a bit of overlap with his It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend, but it's mostly in reiterating that adolescence is a period of trying to avoid embarrassment. Lots of references to Levine and Coloroso, as I expected, and nicely called out suggestions for classroom teachers. I might buy a few more copies to donate to our local gifted and talented association's library.
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The Unifix cubes arrived and we've already put them to use in drilling for math computation. I'm not sure whether we'll use the Invicta attribute blocks yet, but the lot included a quart-sized bag full of pattern tiles so we have another incentive for completing a sheet of practice work. Unlearning years of Saxon habits is going to be a slow process for me.
I'm digging into Richard Lavoie's The Motivation Breakthrough with a pack of post-it flags and a notebook. So far there's a bit of overlap with his It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend, but it's mostly in reiterating that adolescence is a period of trying to avoid embarrassment. Lots of references to Levine and Coloroso, as I expected, and nicely called out suggestions for classroom teachers. I might buy a few more copies to donate to our local gifted and talented association's library.
...
The Unifix cubes arrived and we've already put them to use in drilling for math computation. I'm not sure whether we'll use the Invicta attribute blocks yet, but the lot included a quart-sized bag full of pattern tiles so we have another incentive for completing a sheet of practice work. Unlearning years of Saxon habits is going to be a slow process for me.