Maps, the Science Experiment

J had gymnastics today. Before class, we went to the local office supply store and looked for maps. They had some great ones. I got one of the US, World, Money and a smaller one that had US on one side, World on the other but it also had time zones and populations, etc. that could be interesting to view as well.

Grammie took the day off for a dr’s appt so we invited her to lunch after gymnastics. We met at Long John Silvers and had a nice lunch, followed by a trip to the library. I came out with about 20 books (I finally had to cut the kids and myself off) and came home for for late naps.

Before dinner, I layered the table with tablecloth, maps, clear vinyl. I didn’t mention it at all to anyone. As I set L’s plate down, he was looking at the money poster. He says excitedly, “Mommy, one is an L, upside down”. It took me a few seconds to realize he was saying that the number 1 looks like an upside down L. I agreed and went on to fix my own plate. 5yL and 3yJ were very interested in the maps and asked questions about it. L had the US map and J had the World Map. We have a large square table. It sits very high and we use 2 bar-stool height chairs on each of the 4 sides. It’s an unusual table that we purchased last year and I simply adore it. I sat next to J and Dh sat next to L, with 1yM in-between the adults. J and I talked about where our friends live and where we’ve been, etc. We talked about our trip to Canada in May ‘04 and that our friends who visited this last summer live in Australia. I showed her where Uncle D went to pick up their adopted daughter – “She was so very special that he had to go all the way across the world to find her and bring her back to join their family!” J can now show me where Lily lives (Australia), where her cousin was born (Nepal), where we live (US) and where Canada and Russia are. L, on the other hand, started to make a game out of it. First he recognized a few states. He could tell us right away where our state was. He got very excited when he saw there was a state named after Indiana Jones. ;) We talked about the different states we’ve visited or that we have/had family in. Then L said he was going to Indiana. He got one of his small transformers (a helicopter) and put it on Indiana. DH played along and picked a state too. They jumped around from state to state and L said he was eating food in each state to keep his player strong (thanks, digital games!). He got upset when Dh jumped into his state because Dh would eat up all the food. Then Dh started getting a little schooley – “I’m going to the state north of Cuba”. They played that for a little while and then it was bedtime. It was quite a learning adventure and more interesting than anything I ever did in school myself regarding geography.