Yesterday A was working on J with her Miquon math lessons. They had a series of math problems that looked something like this:
6 - 3 = ?
5 - 3 = ?
4 - 3 = ?
3 - 3 = ?
2 - 3 = ?
She worked thru the set of problems until she got to the last one. She sat and stared at it for a while before looking at A and saying, "This one is different. This is on the other side of zero!"
It's rather neat, I think, to see someone's mind run into these new concepts.
A few months ago, our farmer friends at Hungry Gnome Farm gave us a rooster. It was harassing their hens and the intent was that we would it in the freezer. It was such a pretty rooster, though, that I was really hoping that we could keep it around long enough to get some chicks.
Alas, as the weather has gotten warmer he has gotten much more vocal. The crowing has been pretty much non-stop. As I don't want to create enmity with our neighbors, he will have to go. However, over the past weeks J has grown fond of the rooster. She can't really pet it, but she feeds him with the other hens and he has a name. This morning as I was explaining that I was going to have to put him in the freezer, she was quite upset about it.
"You can't kill our rooster, he's so beautiful!" she said.
"How about I keep a few feathers for you?" I asked.
"No, I like the feathers just where they are," she sobbed.
Later I asked if I there was anything that I could do to make her feel better about it.
"You could not kill him," she wept. Later, a chocolate was accepted as a valid substitute.