Saturday, December 12, 2009

In addition to ironing...

Here's my little ironing secret: I hate to iron!

But it has to be done! (Sigh)

It is very time consuming and tedious and boring...and that's just for me! What about my poor son, Josh? Well, we have devised a fun, educational game that we can play while I iron all the wrinkly pants and shirts for my husband to wear to work. Basically, I have to buy as much time as possible so I can iron as many clothes as possible.

Thanks to my brother-in-law, I was able to borrow his idea of practicing verbal math with Josh whenever there aren't any toys around or when we are in the car. He has three girls, so he is far more experienced with occupying young minds!

Anyway, while I iron, I ask Josh lots of questions.  I ask him what 100+50+7 equals or what 400+70+9 equals, and so on...the permutations are endless, which is what is so great about this game! It's fun and it's so amazing to watch his face think and think and think and when he comes up with the right answer, he's so thrilled and just wants to do more and more! Now, when we are busy doing things and I want to challenge his mind, I make up other verbal quizzes like what's the capital of each state or what letter comes after "D," or what letter comes before "Z."  He has grown to love these games and now he even asks to play them! (He made up a name for the addition game: "The Answers Game.")

Now, I can get a lot of more ironing done, and it's a lot more interesting since Josh enjoys playing these games with me. (Oh, and he loves to turn the tables and make up his own equations for me to solve!)

3 comments:

  1. That's a great idea!!! Aidan's always asking me a ton of questions, I should return the favor. :)

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  2. Ya, sometimes I forget the power of questions. Now, it's just a matter of coming up with new ones! Today it was all about division questions while we were wrapping Christmas presents together--talk about multi-tasking! (That's what we always have to do, right?)

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  3. Wow-we-Wow, what a genius idea!!! I must say I admire your ironing skills :) I haven't ironed a thing since 1999... When Tony & I were dating, I ironed his NAVY blues just right, lol. Needless to say I was fired from that job for taking two million hours to press just one shirt. Iron on Mari, iron on.
    PS- I'm going to try those cool games with Jordan in the car during our drive to VA. Thanks for sharing, super-neato!

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