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WFMW: Knitting Trick
We recently learned some extraordinarily good news. We’re going to be grandparents! I can’t tell you how excited I am! My youngest thinks it’s neat that he’ll be an uncle at 11. (That’s how old my baby brother was when he became an uncle as well.) Anyway…I couldn’t wait to get started making “baby stuff”.
I found this super-soft “Pipsqueak” yarn and knew I had to make a blanket from it. I found an easy pattern for a hooded blanket which will be perfect for Nov/Dec when the baby is born. The pattern is a simple stockinette stitch. However, the yarn is so “fluffy”, that you can’t really look at what you’ve done to see if you need to be knitting or purling the next row.
Out of desperation, I grabbed a bread tab and wrote “P next” on one side and “K next” on the other side. When I stop knitting, I’ll place the instructions for the next row facing out so I know what to do next. (I wrote “next” because, knowing me, when I see a P or K, I won’t remember if that means I just DID a P or K row or if I’m to do one next!)
Bread tabs work for me! To see more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit We Are That Family.
Compassion: Our Story
Compassion Works for Me. And creating a Compassion Sunday page to spread the word REALLY works for me. If you are a Compassion sponsor, please take the time to create a Compassion Sunday page (it’s super easy!). If you’re not a sponsor, please consider becoming one.
Sponsorship is a great way for your children to learn about other countries and the needs of families there. I love that it allows you to build a relationship with your child. Now, you are even able to log in and write a letter, upload a picture and send it right online. What could be easier? It is our involvement in Compassion that gave us the idea to create our “giving jar”.
You can meet our sponsored child, Pascal, and read our story here.
Compassion Works for Me. How about you? To see more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit We Are That Family.
Oh, while you’re here, don’t forget to enter to with a copy of That Works for Me, below!
That Works for Me
I’m so excited to share with you that we have been included in the brand new That Works for Me E-Book from We Are That Family. I have to admit that I’m a Works for Me Wednesday junkie. In fact, my friends would always ask how I knew all my odd little tips. I have to admit that I was a little embarassed to explain that they were from Works for Me Wednesday, which always required further explanation. As helpful (and fun) as the popular weekly linky party is to read through, it does take a good chunk of my time. Plus, I tend to find myself saying, “I read a neat tip for that, but I can’t recall exactly what it was.” Well, those problems are solved!
Now Kristen and Jennifer have compiled 800 of the top tips into one neatly organized volume. How convenient is that!? You can quickly and easily look for a solution to a particular problem or just enjoy browsing topics like decor, blogging, hospitality or crafts to inspire you. Tips are categorized by sections, but there are little icons to denote when a tip fits more than one category. There’s even one for homeschooling!
So hop on over and take a peek. Once you check out the book, click on the home page link to enter the contest to win a gift card for house cleaning ($150 value). Who can’t use that?!
As a contributor, we’ve been allowed to give away one E-Book via our blog as well. Woohoo! One of you lucky readers will get your very own copy and you’ll be able to convince all your friends that you’re a genius just like me. (smirk) To enter to win a free copy just leave a comment below, sharing why you’d like the book. If you’d like to sign up for our monthly-ish creative learning newsletter (upper right sidebar) or like us on Facebook, we’d love it, but we won’t make you do it for an entry. 
I will choose a winner using a random number generator at midnight Pacific time on April 20.
And if you’d rather just get started devouring all those wonderful tips right away, you can use the code SAVE1 to get one dollar off the already low price of $8. Enjoy!
Googols and Other Big Numbers
Try this for a fun, visual way to start off your math work. Discuss just how large a hundred, thousand, million and billion are.
Now ask if they know how large a googol is? A googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. To illustrate this, use a package of 100 paper plates. First, place a large “1″ on the wall or sidewalk. Now, lay down all 100 plates, placing a comma (written on a post-it note) between every three plates. Now your child can see just how large a googol really is!
For a bit of word fun, scroll down a bit and have fun trying to say the big number word names on this chart. Have you heard of a googolplex or a googolplexplex? (I was told that duotrigintillion was the largest number. It doesn’t look like that’s the case, though.)
As a side note, you might discuss how the folks at the popular search engine, Google, chose chose their name.
How did Google get its name?
According to Professor “X” on Questions.com (and multiple other sources): Google derived its name from the word “googol“, a term coined by then nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner. The story goes, Kasner had asked his nephew to invent a name for a very large number – ten to the power of one hundred (the numeral one followed by 100 zeros), and Milton called it a googol. The term was later made popular and in Kasner’s book, Mathematics and the Imagination, which he co-authored with James Newman. Later, another mathematician invented the term “googolplex“, which represents ten to the power of a googol – a substantially larger number.
Here’s a bit more about the history of Google (the company, not the number), if you’re interested.