Mam Papaul King Cake

Gemma asked for King Cake, but since we were a little late and I wouldn’t be able to buy one from a bakery, we ordered a “certified product of Louisiana” cake mix from Amazon - the Mam Papaul King Cake. For $11, we got the cake mix, praline filling mix, glaze mix, sugar sprinkles in purple, green, and yellow, AND a plastic baby to hide under the cake.

Things Gemma said this week...

Sunday afternoon at Trader Joe’s, Gemma complimented a young woman with Bowie glam rock hair and eye makeup by saying, “I like your hair. You look like you’re in Cats. You look like Rum Tum Tugger.”

Two nights ago, Gemma snuggled up to me and said sweetly, “Mom, if I were queen, I would want you to be my regent.”

Last night, while doing some activities in a BrainQuest workbook, Gemma said, in that grave tone teachers use to ask students why they were running in the hall, “Mom. Why have you not taught me social studies?”

Gemma at Dance Class

Day in the Life - 2nd Grade

Today was a holiday for everyone else, but that just means that Mommy is home and Mommy is the one doing school with Gemma.

We started the day with pancakes and bacon. 

Then, I read Gemma a story from Genesis (about Joseph storing grain during “the plenteous years” and selling grain to people from other countries during the years of famine), a Eugene Field poem, a page in Troy & Greece (about Ulysses plotting with Telemachus about how to battle Penelope’s wooers), the last 3 pages of Lamb’s All’s Well That Ends Well, and the story of Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (I did not know that story - fascinating, especially in light of recent events and the men in the story joining the rebellion even though they didn’t know what they wanted). We did some Life of Fred: Decimals (we finished Chapter 20 and are now at the Bridge). We also did several Prodigy Titan Team Battles. We practiced Gemma’s Queen of Hearts lines for her role in the CC production of Alice in Wonderland (there’s a lot of “Off with your head!” being shouted at our house). She did a little kidztype, some spelling, some Spanish. some piano, and worked on a thank you letter. We each did 10 x’s on her cross stitch cat. She read a chapter of her We Were There Klondike book, and there was some cartoon-watching.

It was a cozy, lovely day.

Gemma’s Drawing of a Dancer

Mariel’s Theorem

I woke up this morning with prime numbers on the brain. (Last night, Gemma and I read the Goldbach Conjecture chapter in Life of Fred: Decimals.)

So I emailed Dr. Schmidt to ask him what the name for this is:

Some prime numbers can be the sum of two prime numbers. Examples: 2+3=5; 2+5=7; 2+29=31; etc. One of the addends must be 2, because two odd numbers would sum to an even number and the only even prime is 2.

Dr. Schmidt emailed back and said he didn’t know the name for it, and said that I could name it “Mariel’s Theorem.” 😉 So, unless a mathematician has already named this - I call dibs!

Durer-Inspired Art