wednesday work and play

we talked about square numbers and triangular numbers this morning and used our stones to visualize the patterns.

discovering triangular numbers was interesting. 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78 . . etc . .  add 3 stones to make 6, then add 4 stones to make 10, 5 stones to make 15, 6 stones for 21, 7 stones for 28 and continue going up one and adding that number to the triangle to make each next triangular number.

we also made a pyramid of square numbers beginning with 5 squared (we didn't have enough blocks for 10).

it was interesting for me to see the numbers square themselves into a shape. i've always had trouble visualizing math; making pictures in my head to solve number problems. for me square numbers were always a strange language. picturing blocks piled up on top of each other adds a piece to life's math puzzle for me.

after babysitting for tsamaret and moriah in the early afternoon, and ballet classes in the late afternoon, chanda and i met morgana at the muffin cafe for a sandwich and then we walked to the met opera house to see:

see the little boy in the hat on the bottom right of this picture? that's our friend gael, and he was working as a child extra for the show.

gael had three costume changes and even got to be onstage for the bows at the end. he was wonderful and it was a lot of fun to see him. the show was rather spectacular! the costumes were beautiful, the set was idyllic and the singing was incredibly moving. anna netrebko sang the part of adina, and matthew polenzani sang the part of nemorino. everything at the met is always rather lush. you can see an excerpt of act i here (you can actually get a glimpse of gael in this scene if you look on the right for a boy in a straw hat and brown pants . . at the end you can see him walking off upstage with everyone).