nine

From tiny egg to life on earth,

Nine is the months until our birth.

based on Number Quality Verses, Enki Education 1st Grade Academic Activity

The last of our digits, we covered "9" during the 2nd half of this week. We read the story "The Golden Apples and the Nine Peahens", a Bulgarian Folk Tale about the youngest of 3 sons who discovered the thieves of his father's golden apples -- a flock of nine peahens, led by a magical peahen who transformed herself into a princess to talk with the prince. After 3 nights of visiting with her, the peahen princess is driven off by a witch, so the prince visits her at a lake for 3 nights, then follows her to the castle in which she lives (where they fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after, of course!). It's a lovely story, and the kids again were on the edge of their seats for it, and did a great job with a thorough recall the next day. We discussed the fact that 9 is a triplet -- it is 3 sets of 3. In the story, we found the obvious 9 (the peahens), and then the triplet (3 sons, 3 nights under the apple tree, 3 nights at the lake).

I suggested a led-drawing from the story, since the only significant "9" we could think of in our lives was the length of human gestation which, while cool enough, is a little beyond the scope of what I was looking for us to draw as a simple representative of "9"! We also discussed that 9 is the last single digit. Here's my drawing, of the 9 peahens in the golden apple tree. (The peahen princess, not yet transformed to her human form, sits with the prince.)

J was only too happy to have a led-drawing, and drew his own version of what those peahens were doing. He took it a step further and went ahead and depicted the transformation of the ninth peahen into the princess. (He also told me ahead of time what the princess looked like in his mind -- very descriptive, and VERY cool to have that sort of proof of his comprehension of the stories!)

The Map Man had taken the day off from work to help us celebrate J's birthday yesterday, so he played along and did his own story drawing.

Zoo Boy chose NOT to draw anything at all, but rather wrote the words "J next year", indicating that the "9" to him represented J's age as of his NEXT birthday.

We drew our "9"s today, along with our dots, and a 9-pointed star. One of the things about "9" that we discussed is that it's three tripled. (Three sets of "3".) So our 9-pointed star was three sets of a triangle (our geometric figure for 3). As I showed what we were drawing, Zoo Boy asked for dots to follow, then showed his own understanding of the triplets -- he said to indicate the order to follow the dots in, I could us 1, 2, 3; A,B,C; and Do Re Mi. Pretty clever, I thought!