Swiff Mopping, Math, Japan, and a Bible Verse

Yesterday Mane practiced "mental math" while I "swiff mopped" the kitchen, bathroom & entry. Mental math means I told her math problems, and she worked them out in her head. She's finished lesson 20 in MUS, but we're reviewing this week to solidify concepts. So, she was answering things like, "What's 8 minus 6?" or "What's 3+2+5+4?" We're working on keeping more numbers in her head at a time. It's good brain exercise!

Now, "swiff mopping" just means mopping with the swiffer mop. Yes, I know how wasteful swiffers are, and I just can't bring myself to care right now. I discovered the swiffer when we moved into this house, and I can't tell you how enormously it helps with cleaning. Mango can tell you that I hate cleaning floors more than anything else. I'd rather wash dishes, do laundry, clean the bathroom sink, shine windows...anything but clean floors and vacuum. The swiffer has helped me with that, and now I clean floors a little less begrudgingly. In any case, Mane LOVES the swiffer and has been begging to "swiff mop" everything. So, after the mental math exercise, I let her swiff mop her own room. She dutifully piled all her stuff in the entryway and cleaned her floors. It was a precious sight to see. ;) And she did a great job.

After swiff mopping, we looked up that fabulous kid's website on Japan again, and we read about Japanese houses. Mane drew a Japanese house in her school notebook, and she played a game placing all the special items in their rightful place in a Japanese house. She also took a little online quiz about Japanese culture to be sure she'd been listening to all that reading. We're really enjoying Japan!

Finally, Mane has been having some significant trouble sleeping at night. I think it's related to the anxiety in our house right now (read my other blog, The Midnight Cafe, if you want to know about that). So, I decided to get her started memorizing some Bible verses to comfort her at night. Yesterday she started with Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want." We talked about what that verse means, looked at some pictures of shepherds caring for sheep, and wrote the verse out on an index card. Last night she took the index card to bed with her. She said, "Well, I can't really read it in the dark, but I know what it says," and she slept like a dream.