So bright, his father calls him Son

My dad's a smart guy. He made sure to train me to do some math in my head. While waiting in lines at Disneyland or for a restaurant to seat us, he'd play math games with me.

Having a grandson is a fun thing for Pop because he gets to do it all over again. Imagine his surprise when Superstar - who is only 5 years old - walks into his office, asks to practice his math with Pop, and wants to work on fractions and division.

Superstar's school is a wonderful place. Recognizing he already has remarkably advanced math skills, they let him join the older kids for math. One day the teacher was showing a movie in her class, and he complained that he was there to do math and wanted to do his math. They have him work on addition Tuesdays, subtraction Wed, multiplication Thur, and he gets to choose what he wants Mon and Fri, which is usually subtraction. Just before I left to return here, he passed a multiplication test. (One school I was interviewing with during lunch heard about this and asked if he got an A or just a passing grade - as if that made a ton of difference in a 5 year old. The answer is: he got a B.)

Now, I'll grant you, the way he does his multiplication is by adding numbers quickly. So you give him times tables to fill out and he can do them, 6x7 is just the last question 6x6 plus 6 more, and 6x8 is that plus 6 more and .... But he can still figure it out if they pick problems at random too.

Superstar, Joy, and I played Quirkle - a Scrabble-like game using colors and shapes instead of words. Superstar was able to keep track of his score in his head, adding up double-digit numbers to over 200 almost flawlessly.

My dad's a smart guy. He's in a little bit of awe about Superstar. That's my boy! My son, the math will be with you, always.

Superstar tells a story

Some random person on the
Internet had the same idea for
Halloween, I guess.
This other website has
a noteworthy shot of Luigi
with "baby-"Merida.

Superstar likes pretending to be Mario at school, and the school generally encourages it. He gets to play Mario with his classmates, and they get turns with their favorite things also. Sometimes the teacher is Bowser. 

Yesterday he drew a comic strip of Mario. Another boy drew an Indiana Jones comic. A girl drew Rapunzel. Then they decided to put the stories together. [spoiler alert] The crystal skull would defeat the witch and then Mario would climb up Rapunzel's hair.

We are pretty impressed with Superstar's school.

He has also been creating his own brand new stories. Here is the one he told us at breakfast today:

Prince's rewards: extrinsic and intrinsic

This year we started paying Prince in money for good behavior. Primarily for good potty behavior, but also for being soft for his sister and various acts of maturity above and beyond the call of his years. He gets N1 (one naira), which is about 2/3 of a penny, for each good deed. He also gets a base allowance of N25 each week. Once he has N100 together, we pay him in N10 bills and he can practice paying his tithing, saving for his mission, and putting some money aside to buy that new flashlight he has his eyes on. [It's for his "detective kit," just like the one in The Friend story he read: The Case of the Broken Mirror.]

As an aside, it is really remarkable how hard it is to gather N10 bills! I went to the bank, and the bank wouldn't give me any. I go to shops, and they have a hard time coming up with 5. I usually have to take some N5, a N10 or 2, and a N20. I finally made a deal with the cafeteria and bought N500 worth of their small change.

Joy says, "Prince has been pretending like his Mario checkers are coins. I'm not sure how he pays with them. He'll say, 'I couldn't play checkers today, Mommy, because I was playing with my checkers as money.'"

This has meant we have changed his reward systems. We had 3 going at once. Adding another on top? Ridiculous. So we got to simplify and Joy repurposed his responsibility chart. Won't you tell us about that, dear?

Stuff we are learning about

We were confused that people didn't recognize Princess is a girl when she was a baby. She was dressed in pink, after all! We eventually learned they pierce the ears of baby girls around here, so they just noticed that her ears weren't pierced.

At a presentation on socially constructed gender roles in Nigeria for the freshman seminar I team teach, I learned some more interesting things: girls wear purple, green, and yellow. Boys wear white, black, and red. The teacher said, if you dressed your little girl in white and black, people would ask why you don't love your child.

Now thankfully Princess' wardrobe is not shades of white and black, very heavily pink with some orange and lavender. But that was instructive for picking out next year's wardrobe...

-----

Prince was playing with his calculator yesterday. He typed in 8-9 and it said 1. He told Joy that 8-9 is 1. She was vexed. I took a look at the offending technology and saw the little word "minus" in six point font in the upper left corner. Joy told me in no uncertain terms the time had come to teach Prince another one of the facts of life.

Conversations with a preschooler

Tonight, I had the following, unprompted discussion with my son while he was (avoiding) getting ready for bed. I won't even include my response because they consisted of little more than "What?"

Daddy, do you know what 10+10 is? 10+10 is 20.
Daddy, do you know what 10+10+10 is? 10+10+10 is 30.
Daddy, do you know what 10+20 is? 10+20 is 30.
Daddy, do you know what 20-10 is? 20-10 is 10.
And 10-10 is 0.

He then proceeded to apply this new-found knowledge to MarioParty, discussing how many coins you would have after winning a minigame.

He then discussed the ethics of math! I have to paraphrase this part: This whole concept of "20 take away 10" all depends on just who takes the 10 away and how and why. If one person takes it away from someone else without asking, that's stealing and it's wrong. But if you eat the vampire candy and the coins disappear, then it isn't stealing. But 20 take away 10 is still 10 either way. And if you take away 10 and there's 0 left, that's sad, no matter how it gets taken away.

I was there when Joy had the conversation with Prince about what 10+10 was for the first time. It was Friday. From Friday to Sunday he figured all that out.

Joy's comment at this point is just as priceless: "Boy, I've got to be really careful when I talk to him about numbers. I don't mean to expand his mind."

!!!!

Prince tells a story

Prince's drawing during scripture time and beyond has taken a large leap forward. He used to copy numbers or letters. Then he started drawing things that reminded him of words or scenes from the bit of scripture we were reading. Now he's written his own story. You can read the first bit on the page on the left; the rest was on a different page.

"The Book of Mario. Mario and Peach lived in a cast[le]. They walked around and then they found Luigi."

Prince had Mommy's help with some of the spelling.

I remember reading before I started Kindergarten at 5. The family remembers my brother reading before I did. I don't think either of us could write a short story at age 4 - certainly not one legible to any but a trained Egyptologist with a urim and thumim. Go, Prince!

Home schooling

Prince won't be returning to his school this semester. We'll see about later. But for now that means Joy will be homeschooling our preschooler while toddling after a toddler. So far the plan is to build his schedule one piece at a time.

The first thing it means is that part of his morning routine before breakfast includes writing out the phrase "Jesus loves me" or another appropriate lettering exercise after he says his prayers and before he plays. He is very excited about it. This morning he realized Joy hadn't included lines for Sunday. "I didn't mean for him to do homework on Sunday," she explains. I figured writing "Jesus loves me" was thoroughly Sabbath appropriate, so I drew some more lines for him. He then drew lines for all of next week.

They are planning some reading time every day and an art project.

Joy says, "I plan on keeping it flexible, just things that happen during the day. I think one of the benefits of him being home is that he won't have to have a regimented schedule. We'll do some math because he loves numbers. Derrill's going to work on story problems in picture form with him. We got a LeapPad for some more independent learning activities."

It made a lot of sense, seeing how much he loved the LeapFrog video of learning how to make words. We haven't given it to him yet, though, so we don't know how well it will work.

"We're going back to doing his scripture study with him." He can often read half or more of a verse of scripture with us by himself. We also started reading scriptures first thing in the morning because I'm teaching an 8am class twice a week. The kids are a LOT better behaved at 6:15am than at 6:15pm. I'm becoming a convert.

"Derrill's trying to help me figure out sections of time that I can spend with each of the kids, and to find time for myself too."

And as one of the nice side effects of this practice, this is what he wrote me this morning: I LUV MI DAD. He later expanded it to say "I LUV MI DAD AND MOM AND LUVY AND HYRUM."

"I will also be working with him about 20 minutes a day on flexibility, conversation skills, and sharing."

There's not enough Prince on this blog...

At the Cinco de Mayo celebration, chasing Daddy

Getting some love from "Aunt Margee."

Starting a new semester

Prince resumed school on Monday, much to his delight. When we told him he was going back to school, he asked if it was the 9th. Yes, he had remembered from weeks and weeks before that school would start on the 9th of January. Several riots pushed back the start of his school by two weeks. He was eager and happy to return.

When he returned, the report from his school was equally happy. He was such a very good boy - didn't take anyone else's toys, didn't push anyone, didn't have to go to the corner even once.

The best thing we did over the break was finally pull out of the closets - where it has sat for 3 years now, waiting for such a time as this - this magnet board of "My Responsibility Chart." We and he chose 8 goals, and every day he accomplishes his goal he gets a stamp. If he gets 5 stamps in a week for a certain goal, he gets a Terrific Job stamp. His first week was ... difficult. Last week, he got 6 Terrific Jobs. He loves them and is highly motivated.

Then on Thusday, I also got to go back to school. AUN resumed instruction only two days behind schedule. They haven't announced yet if that will affect finals or graduation yet, but my gut tends to doubt it.

I am teaching two sections of principles of macroeconomics (a new class for me) and development economics (which I taught last semester, but this time I'm using my own textbook). Last semester at the beginning, I expected and was not surprised, to see half of the enrolled students actually present. We covered some real ground anyway and I found a couple ways to give them credit for their diligence. This semester, throughout the school, classes opened with 3 ... 4 ... sometimes fewer students! Friday's development class we were up to 9, though and some classes reported in the low teens. I had an entertaining message from a student yesterday, asking if I were back in town yet? Um, yes. Yes, I am.

I had volunteered to help sign students in for orientation and spent two afternoons preparing for my presentation to the freshmen on how to succeed/not-fail-miserably in college. Point number one is to show up.

I also got moved to a new office, upstairs. It's much larger. I get a second desk, my own bookcase, and we have a water cooler in our room. Our apartment complex is also getting a fresh coat of paint (darkish blue-gray and kind of a sage green, I think).

Safe and Sound

Today was a quiet day. We got some extra cleaning done, Princess was adorable, we played a lot of board games (including introducing Prince to Solarquest, a galactic version of Monopoly) and made chocolate cake. Prince and I finished reading the Wizard of Oz and he asked to go on to read book #2 in the series. Oh, and I cut my own hair and did more than just shave it all down for the first time. It turned out more layered than tapered, but it works. Everything was quiet outside.

If you want to know what's going on in the rest of Nigeria, look under the fold. The point of this post is that we are happy and healthy and well provided for. Only look under the fold if you want things to worry about or to make your prayers a bit more specific. We're fine and feel at peace.

Prince Talks About School

My kids are having fun with my toys. And I don't like that. And I want to play with my own blocks. And my kids keep knocking down my building. And uh my kids are doing bad things. [He names two of the kids] are pulling on my shirt.

The man keeps telling me I need to go to the Club. The man is the driver on the bus. I was sitting next to him, and then he said I'm going to the Club and swim. Daddy, he doesn't want to take me home a lot. And he wants me to go back to the Club and swim.

When I got home then I do ask Mommy what happened.

Ms. Evelyn is coming back right after my birthday. I'm three years old right now. And then I just talked to Ms. Evelyn about what I did at school.

They keep pushing me on the swings. And I like that, Daddy. I like it when they push me on the swings.

Prince's Prize: student of the month

 Hi there! Prince here!

I was Student of the Month this month. That meant I got a free chocolate at the AUN Club.

I chose a Twix. I didn't quite understand that the chocolate was frozen hard ... or that Twix are naturally hard anyway ... or that nothing else was less hard. So Mommy and Daddy got to eat my treat. I was very proud anyway.

Hmmm, how much is that in Naira?

School Pictures

Presenting the Prince on his first day of school
in Nigeria.

Prince gets to school by a bus that parks at our complex overnight. So we have a nice front-row seat to know when the bus driver is getting ready to go. The first day I accompanied him to school (playing Mario DS on the bus) and Joy went to the school the first two days to pick him up. Now our neighbors' children watch him to make sure he stays on the bus all the way home.

We lucked out today. School ends early on Friday and we forgot about it. Joy had gone to take Princess to the doctor for shots and I had gone to the bank to finally cash my first paycheck. Joy made it home in time but forgot the bus would come early. I arrived at the same time as his bus, so I was standing right there to welcome him home. ... Good thing the bus driver called out to me that he had "one of yours here" since I hadn't recognized it as the school bus. ... Oh dear.

Overall his first week has been a success. He loves his Mario-red uniform, enjoys playing with the toys ("I play with all of them!") and is starting to work on his empathy ("I was sad the other children cried so much. It hurt my ears.")

The rest of these pictures are from my earlier trip to AUN in May. Right now it's a touch or three greener.

Recess happens at the beginning of day before it gets amazingly hot. Since the children wear shorts, I was worried about that -- even the LA sun was enough to fry through my corduroys on the metal slides I played on back in the day.












His classroom is just to the right of this picture, though at the time the students his age met in the room pictured on the left.

Registration for school

Prince will be going to the Community School that is run by AUN. We were told that the teachers would be available in their classes to meet students and to be introduced into their new classrooms Wednesday and Thursday. The school manager was kind enough to contact us to schedule an appointment since Derrill has no afternoon hours and the teachers were available for introduction in the afternoons. We met with four wonderful people, Prince’s teacher, the teacher’s aide, the school manager and the community school manager. We were able to discuss Prince’s strengths and weaknesses and had a good meeting where we both seemed to be able to pay a lot of attention even with Prince playing in the same room.
After meeting with the them, we went into Prince’s class and let him get comfortable with the room and some more balls (he had played with a ball during the meeting. I fed him some lunch. I think his favorite thing was when the teacher got out her stamps that she uses for the children’s work to let them know they have done well, one said “Way to go!” He was given paper and a stamping pad and had a very nice time using them. Even when he stamped one on the carpet, they didn’t get upset at him and they thought he was very cute when he said he was sorry.
After spending time in the class, Prince wanted to play outside again. We were waiting for a shuttle so he went out to play while we waited. I didn’t feel like the assistant to the teacher needed to watch Prince while he played outside, but she followed him around everywhere. I told her she didn’t need to, but I wasn’t going to argue the point, because I knew that her close proximity would be helpful in him getting used to his teachers and the environment, because it wasn’t bothering him and he was learning to as for her assistance when he needed it. I thought it was above and beyond the call of duty and I have to confess that it did ease my mind somewhat actually seeing him being cared for in my presents.
Prince tried on his new uniform. They have all of the students where a uniform at the school. The boys where a red polo shirt with AUN on it and navy shorts and the girls where a red polo shirt with navy pinafore or a skirt. Prince was thrilled with his uniform because it is a Mario (red) shirt to be worn every day. Their system is that you pay into their account at the bank, then you get the uniform after you give them verification from the bank that you have paid. They gave us the information, Derrill paid for the uniforms and the registration at the bank, and Prince receive his uniforms (two) on Monday which was the first day of school.
On the way out of school I also met other teachers that Prince would be working with, the PE teacher and other educators. It was a good introduction to the school. The Community school supervisor or manager is a delightful woman and I really appreciated everyone that I met.
Additionally on the way home, while Prince and I were waiting for a ride (the shuttle). A lady that lives in 16 flats where we live offered us a ride home. She, Grace, and her daughter, Praise, were very kind and enjoyable to visit with. Grace has a son who is 3 and one that just turned 5 last week. They were having a birthday party for the 5 year old in a couple of days and she invited us to attend. That was very kind after just meeting us. The more people I meet it seems that more comfortable I am here. I should not be so surprise, I am such a people oriented person.
---Joy

The Reviews are In

I mentioned Prince's poster with statements from his classmates about him. I'll post a picture of it on our old blog (for those who know where that is), but the comments are here:

T -- Prince loves to play with me outside.
Kt -- Prince likes to play in block corner and ride bikes.
Ay -- Prince likes to play with me outside.
D -- Prince likes to play in the block corner.
B -- Prince likes to sing songs at circle time.
Ax -- Prince likes letters.
Ki -- Prince likes boats.
I -- Prince likes outside time.
Z -- Prince is learning to use the pedals on a bike
J -- Prince likes to play with trains.
P -- Prince is my friend.

Is there anything you would like to say about your friends, Prince?

"A____y took a deep breath!" We are grateful that A_____y took a deep breath, Joy adds. She helped teach Prince how to take deep breaths to calm down.

His note to T____ was also sweet: "I like to sit next to T_____" T was his bus buddy, at least when they weren't hitting, pushing, and kicking each other as boys are wont to do.

 -- DW

pre-Graduation

The Prince had a "graduation" ceremony at preschool yesterday. I was thinking auditorium and no one will see me, so I brought my work computer along, just in case. Wrong. It was just a little get together being thrown by the class. Prince's teacher called each student up one by one (as their parents showed up in some cases) and told everyone a little bit about them.

She said (to paraphrase) "Prince joined our little group very late in the year. When he got here, he wasn't sure he wanted to be here and he really preferred to play by himself. He didn't want to play with others. But now he doesn't want to play by himself. He looks around and asks for someone to play with him. He and his family are moving to (where are you moving?)" she prompted. The Prince dutifully came out with "Nigeria" and, on additional prompting, that Mommy is having a girl.

I cannot describe just how proud I was.

I'll try anyway.