Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Roofs Are Expensive!

Today is Veteran's Day. If you personally know a veteran, say "thank you" to them somehow: call, email, text, or in person. If you don't know a veteran, then ask a friend if they know a veteran and if they do, ask them to say "thank you" on your behalf.

Because today is Veteran's day, my district isn't in service today. Therefore, I was able to sleep in a few minutes longer today. I woke up to the sound of this pitter-pattering on the roof of our house. Not five minutes later, my 4.5 year-old son walks into the room and says he hears something that woke him up. I wonder what? Ha.

He climbs in bed with me and I ask him if he knows what the sound is. I proceed to tell him the sounds he hears are birds walking around on the roof hitting the roof with their beaks. When we moved into our house, there was a fake owl tied to our roof. Supposedly it keeps birds away. Not too sure it's all that effective, but we keep it up to have an occasional laugh.

My son thinks that the birds might start to ruin the roof and that we'll have to replace it.
Son: That will probably cost more than $100 to fix.
Me: How much more?
Son: Probably like one-hundred, one thousand dollars.
If you read my Pumpkin Seeds post, you know that his vocabulary includes a thousand now which is the biggest number he currently "knows". I use "knows" very loosely.
Me: Oh, I see. Well, which number is bigger? One hundred or one thousand?
Son: One thousand!
Me: Right. So we say the bigger number first, like this, "One thousand, one hundred."
Son (whispering to himself): One thousand. One hundred.
Me: That's a lot of money.
Son: Maybe one hundred twenty?
Me: Oh, so that's smaller than one thousand, one hundred.
Son: I KNOW! TEN THOUSAND!
Me: How do you know?
Son: Well, we have a big roof. We would need a lot of wood. We'd have to go to Home Depot and get all the things. 
Me: So we can buy all the things from Home Depot?
Son: Yes.
Me: And then would we put the roof on by ourselves or have some worker-men do it for us.
Son: You and I can do it Dad.
It dawns on me. Geez, I hope it's not $10,000. That's a lot of money. At the same time, I'm glad my son doesn't know the concept/magnitude of "A million" yet. Regardless, I have no idea what a new roof might cost, let alone how to put a new roof on. But maybe I'll save a lot of money on the labor because I have a 4.5 year-old son extremely willing to climb on top of our house and help install a new roof.

Roofing,
1023

P.S. I'm enjoying these conversations and posting about them.
Today felt like Mathematical Practice 4 with my son.


1 comment:

  1. Got a kick out of seeing that bird on your roof, laughed about your son's thinking as well! I was talking to my husband, and he agrees with you, replacing roofs or at least repairing them is expensive. I hope you don't have to shell out $10,000, we know sooner than later ours will need work.

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