Mothering Forum banner

what did your USer do today?

8K views 129 replies 45 participants last post by  SweetSilver 
#1 ·
I sometimes think people think USers sit around and do nothing all day (of course, some days that is true, lol). There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about what USers actually do. In addition, I like seeing how other people live their lives and perhaps gleaning some ideas....

With that in mind.....

What did you do today?

All poster welcome - from "I am not sure if I am an USer" to "I am a Radical User!" Labels smables, if you hang out here and somewhat identify as an USer, go ahead and post!

It has been a fairly typical day here in muggleland....

Ds is sleeping. He is a teen. He likes his sleep. He will wake up and do an online French class. This is completely of his own choosing. He will probably accompany me to work as he has a French assignment due today at midnight - and he is a beginner at French and wants some help with the assignment (my French is good).

DD has been up since 8:30 or so. We have made a cake (she wanted to) and she has done some math. We did some adding of 2 digits, and telling time and played with cuisinaire rods. She invented a game with them and we played it. I did ask her if she wanted to do math - but she said yes, and we stopped when she wanted to stop.

I think she has telling time and adding 2 digits under her belt, so I asked her what she would like to do next and she said fractions - so that we will do!

She has spent a lot of time drawing today (she hauled in the chalk board) and found a book (from among old Guiding supplies) related to trail markings and she told me she would like to do that. I cannot wait for winter to end......

I have no doubt that before the end of the day we will do some reading. She is an emerging reading - which is a post on its own. I try to give her every opportunity to read, without making it into a chore. I think she has most of the skills down, just needs some time to develop fluency and speed. I would not be suprised if she writes a story - she does that a lot these day. She uses volumes of paper. She has numerous stories on the go.

She has just asked to use the glue gun (not sure what for) but I like to supervise that so I have to go. I think she is making a bird house......
 
See less See more
#128 ·
Only five miles from our house in town to our new house on the property we've had for 15 years. Finally!

We don't actually live in Olympia, like it says. And I'm afraid that isn't really my picture there on the left.

Close enough, though, on both counts. :)
 
#129 ·
SS - congratulations on the move; you sound really excited.

Today was jam packed and utterly mad. This morning I did some cleaning and laundry and read a couple chapters of The Mouse and the Motorcycle to dd(3) while ds(8) tried to beat Luigi's Mansion. Then we all plopped down on the rug to do some activities from a Big Backyard magazine. Lego projects for a bit until the kids got restless. We all played hide and seek, but ds and I took turns one-upping each other using skip-counting when it was our turn to count. So dd would count to ten, but ds or I might count to thirty by 3s or whatever. Then I sent the kids outside to explore while I got some cleanup done. Ds roamed the woods next to the house while dd picked flowers and collected stones. And some neighborhood kids came by because they're on spring break this week. DS helped his friend figure out how to play a video game while her little brother played legos, and after a bit, their dad stopped in to see if I could keep an eye on them while he went to run some errands. DS read aloud with my help from a book he's been trying to get through for a while now, tried to finish a metal model of a dinosaur even though he'd lost the instructions, worked a bit on a robot kit, made some label cards with Chinese vocab words for stuff around the house, all while the neighbor kids were hanging out, sometimes participating, sometimes on their own adventures or projects. It was nice to have them around to spark new conversations, get new ideas into the mix. The girl was really interested in how school worked for us, how ds learns grammar, why we don't work from textbooks or take tests, how our projects translate to learning, all that. Her little brother had a million questions, like how skin grows back when it peels or you get a cut or how people in other countries learn to speak their own language so well. I got out games, played with play-dough, lent a hand when needed, made lunches and snacks, vacuumed messes, read, and talked and laughed and generally had an awesome time. At 4, ds went to his kung fu class, and his friend lamented not being able to go along. After a bit the neighbor kids' dad came home, and they ran off and played, and dd and I got busy in the kitchen making fried rice and broccoli with garlic sauce. She ate on the back porch and chased an umbrella all over the yard as the wind kept blowing it inside out and carrying it all over the place, giggling like crazy the whole time. Ds came home and shoveled down a plateful of food so I could take him to a friend's to spend the night. I ran a couple of errands and came home to give dd a bath, and another chapter of Mouse and the Motorcycle, and an extended hair brushing while we sang songs because she says it makes her feel like Rapunzel, like she's magic. And now I am too wired to even sleep, so I will tidy and read, poke around until I can doze off. Tomorrow's mission is yardwork.
 
#130 ·
Oooooh, Chinese! My youngest daughter has me learning French (well, Usbourne's First Thousand Words, books she loved for Spanish and German which at least I can pronounce admirably). Thankfully they have the books internet-linked and I can sit here and learn the pronunciation. I'm starting to guess pretty well now, and now my girls are also saying HA! when they get something. Still working on that French 'R', and it still sounds like the German. Oh well. I thought I had some the umlauted 'U' right until some German guy kept correcting me. Sounded like I was doing it right but apparently not. Never mind, he knew what I was saying........

Yesterday the baby chicks arrived and I am a nervous wreck. It is cold here and they are in the garage and I am obsessing over the temperature of their pathetic duct-taped-cardboard brooder box.

Still reading Harry Potter.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top