(Hannah's first time playing with the rods)These have been on my wish list for several years now. This seemed like the perfect time to buy them - I had the money, they were up for a good price on eBay, and I thought that Hannah was finally old enough to enjoy them. (I didn't think about Ainsley because I have some set thoughts about math and one of them is that math is a school-y subject, and only a child of a certain age would be ready for toys that are made to teach math concepts. I have some unschooling of myself left to do.)
(Ainsley's first time playing with the rods)When I put them out the first time, both girls approached them in their own characteristic way. Hannah asked how she was supposed to play with them, Ainsley dumped them out and started building stuff.
I didn't answer Hannah directly. I started messing around with them, making daisies and staircases and modern art and while I did that, I mentioned that the rods were made with specific measurements that fit together in interesting ways. She started doing her own thing, and we were off.
She ended up, as she usually does, ending up doing what the makers of the rods intended children to do with the rods - making mathematical connections.Every time since then that we've gotten them out, it's gone the same way.
Ainsley builds things - buildings, farms, playgrounds, bridges ... And I've been surprised at the mathematical discoveries she makes from non-directed play. The bridge supports have to be the same size, or it won't work. The pigs have to be smaller than the horses who can't be too big too fit in the barns. The parents in the playground are taller than the kids, whose size has to be adjusted to fit onto the swings. Little things, but quite striking when you watch her little mind work them out.
Hannah pushes different ones together and tries to find which other rods will line up exactly on the side. Then she adds some to the top of the second row and makes the first row and a third row equal. She makes up games and recruits me to play with her. She measures different things with the rods, trying to use as few rods as possible to measure the length of something.
Grayson's little regimental soul is fulfilled with lots of colored sticks and a box full of dividers to put them into.
So if these have been on your 'maybe' list or your wish list and you get a chance to get them, my vote is to give them a try.Right now, my children just having fun playing with them, but if I notice a desire for more, I have this to check out.
Math is the one area of homeschooling that I have to remind myself to calm down about. Very nervewracking.
Ainsley's is a ghost. Hannah's is an octopus. And I got a puppet show out of the whole deal.
(he had stage fright)
He was exploring the ocean and came to an octopus cottage. "How lucky am I?!?" said the octopus. (He was very lucky, by the way, Mother. There aren't very many octopus cottages in the ocean.) So he settled into the cottage and ate all of the food he could find.
A SHARK found his cottage and it tried to eat him, but he wouldn't let it. He sprayed inky black stuff ALL OVER the shark and he said GO AWAY SHARK!!! and the shark went away."
Hannah: "I'm not a 
Ainsley: "A grandpocopuss? What a grandpocopuss?"
The end."
I was sure that he was going to be a huge, fantastically beautiful butterfly and excitedly looked him up on some very cool butterfly identifying websites. He wasn't on them. So we kept him alive until he went into his cocoon.
Or partway into his cocoon anyway. Look at that. When a caterpillar makes a cocoon that has his butt hanging out, can you say he did a half-assed job?
Oh, he was gorgeous, just hanging there on that grass. He'd climbed out of the jar and onto the longer grass stems to dry his wings.
He was big. As long as my pinkie. We took a few pictures (the ones of him drying out his fully spread out wings didn't turn out at all - his 'under wings' were hot pink - so pretty), inspected him with the magnifying glass (sucker had HUGE eyes), and then when his wings started doing a furious 'flying in place' type of movement, we ran him outside to the patch of weeds in the flower garden that he was found in. He took off (have I mentioned that he was quite big?) and Hannah cried about missing him for a few moments.
While looking at these pictures, I noticed that I was trying to capture on film the details that had captured my eye when looking around. Some details *were* small, like the handle of that toy gun.
Some were bigger, like a girl blowing bubbles on her little sister's neck. Still, I left out the 'clutter' around her that I still remember - her dad telling her to be careful with the baby in the stands and then getting distracted by his sons walking along the backs of the benches. That wasn't important to me.
These cowboy boots and the little girl that wore them were adorable - I took one picture with her looking toward me and it didn't have the same feel to it. I didn't include the five adults gathered around her talking - her small body and the tiny boots drowned in that much action.
I didn't include the boys that this kid was obviously talking to (and roping, by the way). It's not a well set up shot, but it captures the essence of little cowboys.
As did this one. Three-year old cowboys are too cute for words, but between this picture and another full body shot I took of him, this one had the most punch.
And then there was this shot. I had several shots on my camera of macro views of this scenario, but this one, the shot that originally caught my eye, is what I kept. I didn't see the hose or the halter or the boy's boots when I first looked at this. I saw what you see here, and that's what I wanted to keep, to blog about.
But there were donkeys. (Mules really, but I won't tell if you won't.)
And candy. And so much more. 
These little boys were in the stands beside us. They told me that they were "going to be in the stick horse competitions. But we're going to get so muddy. Seriously. We're not even kidding. We won't be able to stop it." Inevitability can suck, can't it?
I didn't get a picture of Grayson looking adoringly at them. And then my five-year-old broke out of her shyness and offered them some of her parade candy. Bad boys have a strange attraction. Little boys want to be them, little girls want to share their candy with them.
I agreed. Because I wasn't thinking.
And ate.
And made friends - if only for an hour.
And laughed.
And jumped.
And watched (really bad) puppet shows. The man wasn't even 
Then there was karaoke. You couldn't set this one up any better, down to his socks.
He wasn't that good, but he was brave and loud. That counts for something.
Mother turned into a crusty adult and told some kids with no parents around to quit poking the turkeys in the small pens with sticks.
"Saw sheep? Check. Saw man singing? Check. Jumped in jump house? Check. Mother, I haven't been able to check 'eat ice cream' off my list yet. We'd better do that soon." Check.
And went back for more karaoke. This little kid who still had a high voice was singing Kenny Chesney. He rocked the house.
And Grayson clapped.
Another man sang several Johnny Cash songs, including a few slow ones that I've never heard before that had Ainsley swaying around like she was listening to a lullaby.
We read - and read - and read.
It was too hot to leave the tents for very long. We visited all of the exhibits in the air-conditioned buildings. I even attempted the vendor building but skedaddled out of there after just one aisle. (That was partly because wrangling three kids - Gray was scorning the backpack by then - through tables filled with just-at-their-height goodies was daunting and partly because of the 'Save Morality!!!' table with the 'There never were dinosaurs, it's all a plot by the ATHEISTS!' table that I could see around the corner on the next aisle. Explain that one to Hannah? No thank-you. Not today.)
Home.
