January 19, 2014

Officially sharing a room

Today starts the official sharing of Quinn's room for the kids. It was their choice. I'm expecting it to last at least a year or more. We'll see.

January 03, 2014

Outside the Box Thinker

I was teaching Quinn to play the solitaire game, Pyramid, where you lay the cards out in pyramid style: 1 at the top, 2in the next row, etc. till you have 7 cards along the bottom row. The goal is to disappear the pyramid by making 2 cards add up to 13. 5+8, 4+9, etc. I played once to show her how. She laid out the cards and played by herself (with some coaching from me) for the second game. On the third game she asked, "Can I use 3 cards?" There was a 7+5+1=13. In the many years I have played this game it never occurred to me to use more than the 2 cards to reach 13. I don't know if the rules say to use just 2 cards but I'm going to try it Quinn's way. It will add a whole new depth to the game! Oh, and she now knows immediately the numbers that add up to 13. :-)