Today was one of those days where you can’t help feeling some lunacy has crept into modern maths methods really. Not entirely sure why we persisted with it; it was a useful skill, essentially, but set out in a way that will never really come into real life. I’ll have to think of a way of translating it into something more user-friendly.
It was a page of “finding the difference” between 2 digit numbers by way of setting out the ‘jumps’ up through round numbers – so to do 43-16 it had a series of boxes showing you how to go up to 20, then up to 40, then up another 3 to 43 – all very well but i couldn’t escape the feeling we were doing it backwards somehow. Nevermind the fact that we had a 10 minute stand off while Fran tried to think of a way of writing down a number that meant she had counted 3 lots of 10 🙄
Actually if it had been billed as finding the difference, it would have been better, but it was set out as 43-16=? and then the working out done from the other direction. ‘Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools these days?’
Otherwise it was all perfectly nice. I signed them up to a 2 week trial of SparkIsland; Maddy at least was well into it, Fran a bit less so, but she’s worked quite hard by then. She did a bit of ETC (i’ll drop the x shall i?) and requested a break after we finish book 4 – i’ll go with that b ut might get book 4 1/2 to go back to after as she’s found the syllable thing hard but useful. She’s also been carrying on with practising number words, which she’s be remarkably into.
Amelie has been out again, i read more First People to the big two and have promised to find the sites with them later. Lots of good stuff came out of it anyway. Now they are watching Ice Age *Doom on you… doom on you* (counts as educational surely?) and i have to wrestle a few jobs into submission. Think i finally killed the Student Loan Company – they have, in their words, done me a “big favour” as they’ve agreed not to charge me the arrears and charges accrued because of their mistake. 🙄
Last night we finished The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Bit of a defining parental moment for me really, its the thing i have most looked forward to reading my children for about the last 15 years, if not more. Max read Fran it when she was 2 days old; she fell asleep on his lap and stayed there for 4 hours, the first time she had slept or stopped crying since birth. Must find the photo.
Anyway, we all managed not to cry, i’d forgotten how hard the speech is at the end and it lost them a bit i think – they’ve enjoyed it anyway. Far better than Olga-da-sodding-Polga – and now, further up and further in – its back to The Magician’s Nephew to find out how Narnia came to be in the first place 🙂
