Math Games and Lefties

Ciaran wanted to do school today. Not a typical sentence I hear from him these days. Much more often I hear "Can I watch a movie? or Can I play a videogame?" so I went with it. He wanted to play math games he said. He really wanted to try sudoku - I really was not sure he could but Rhia has several books so we tried some. He loved it and was great at it! I had to write the answers in for me but he gave me them. He even got to the point where he could figure out some that were not obvious. I was so proud of him and surprised. I never would have thought to do those puzzles with him.

We played some addition and subtraction games with pictures and little Sirah wanted to count things because she watched him doing it. Then Rhia and Ciaran had puzzle races. They both had 12 piece puzzles of comprable difficulty and they raced. Ciaran won first and then Rhia. Ciaran loves puzzles and has the patience and follow- through or tenacity to finish them. Rhia on the other hand does not. So they were probably evenly matched even with the age difference.

Then he practiced writing his letters. Today I discovered an interesting challenge to having a left handed son. He wants to write right to left on paper. He writes the letters the right way so when you read them they read left to right but he starts writing in the far right hand corner and writes the column down and then goes to the next letter to the left and writes that column down (if there are several lines) and so on and the last letter he does it what most people would do first. It was strage to see but then I realized - he can still see the letters and he does not write over his past letters. This will be an interesting challenge. Any parents of left-handers out there? Any words of wisdom?

Peace,
Tenn