Fire house!

We got to tour the Fire House today! It was really a great tour - much better than the other "open houses" that we've been to before. We got to see the laundry room and the kitchen and even our tour guide's bed with his dirty laundry on it, lol. They had one of the fire fighters slide down the pole for us! He told us that they used to let people slide down it until one year, at a Christmas party, they let Santa slide down the pole. His costume and padding were just too slippery and he had zero traction. He basically just fell from the second story and broke his leg. Poor Santa. I bet those firemen got lumps of coal in their stockings that year! They let the kids climb all over the truck and touch the fire suit. We learned the difference between a fire truck and a fire engine (the truck has the ladder!) and we learned that of the 4000 calls they took last year, about 200 of them were actual fires.

So what subject does that count as? Is that Social Studies? Or perhaps Health & Safety? I only ask because I was counting it as one of Cameron's two to three required subjects to earn his video games, lol. About 45 minutes before we had to leave for the tour I quick shoved his math book at him and told him that he had to hurry up and do his math now since I had something that I had to do after the tour and wouldn't be able to help him later. He fussed and fretted and sighed and slowly made it through one of two pages in the exercise. So rather than let him off easy, I told him to bring it along in the car to finish on the way! And guess what... it worked! He did it!! And he did it with much less fuss and less "help" than he usually needs! I guess it was just the novelty of doing it in the car, but man that was so painless! I may have to find somewhere far to drive every day so that he can do his math in the car. Maybe it's just the fact that he's strapped down? Somehow, I get the feeling that it wouldn't work as well to strap him down in his dining room chair. LOL!

And that was it for school today but here is my big news.... our new history encyclopedias came in the mail today!!!!!! I am so stinkin' excited! I cannot wait to sit down with them and plan out the next 8 years, lol. I got The Usborne Book of World History and The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. I actually hugged them when I took them out of the box. Yes, I am a dork. I know. The best part is that I got them for free! My dad have given each of the kids a $15 gift card to Barnes & Noble for Christmas. I had been debating whether or not to use them for the encyclopedias because the prices at B&N are so much more than Amazon or Rainbow Resources, but they sent me a coupon for 15% off and I got free shipping so I was able to get both books that I wanted with 65 cents to spare. :) Yippee!! OK, off to invoke the "do as I say, not as I do" rule and go read during dinner. ;)