Okay. New life model.
*Do not procrastinate first thing; get parcels done before kids finish breakfast (having got them organised the night before) and don’t drag it out half the morning or worse.
*Group maths. Hurrah, this worked again today and i even dug out something for Amelie and managed to get her tootling along beside us at one end of the table while Josie drew at the other end. Result all round excellent, Maddy swum through the Grade 1 and Grade 2 fractions stuff on edhelper, pausing only to moan she wasn’t doing the MEP7 too, Fran did a load of G3 edhelper stuff and then she and i did some MEP7 together. Today we added fractions, compared fraction sizes, converted fractions and generally found it all very interesting and enjoyable. The fraction circles have been a complete blessing but we outgrew them today when we moved on to 7ths, 14ths and beyond. She completely impressed me by doing a whole block of “1/3 = ?/6” type questions, using multiplication of top and bottom, completely right and actually faster than i could write them for her 🙂 What i really got a buzz out of was the adding; often, when we hit a new subject, i realise why it was it never all made sense to me, given i really needed it spelled out. Today i found myself explaining that the bottom number (denominator?) is just there to tell you what you are working with, but that the sum is using the actual amounts from the top. Effortless, she got it. Yet no one ever really explained that to me and quite frankly the entire thing baffled me for years. I never really worked out what i was doing.
I had a pants maths education, didn’t i?
Fran was feeling a bit english resistant so i sent her up to work on EC instead of doing written english and that worked fine; she spent ages on the 6 Year 2 english things i’d marked out for her and was quite happy. Meanwhile Maddy and i did some ETC and she reminded me that actually she can read quite well, which i had slightly forgotten! And then we did the bean book together, putting it aside only so that we could go out and get new pencils and pencil sharpeners (where do they go?) later. She went out after that and prepared seed beds for some stuff she wants to plant.
Not sure what else happened; swimming, a trip to Tesco where we got everything but the pencils and pencil sharpeners 🙄 and then home for tea, playing and the like. The girls got their ballet certificates and medals, bizarrely an identical medal to the only one i ever got! and are very pleased with them. Both got commended (some IDTA juvenile thing?) Fran got 75 and Maddy got 78 – so well done to both of them but extra big up to Moo for not getting outshone by her sister. And that was with no special dispensation for her at all; teacher said she didn’t need it.
Wish they did some sort of numpty mummy guide for ballet exams though, i’ve not got a clue what all this stuff i pay for them to take is!
Right, i feel we have fledgling botany and mammal projects taking off, plus an interest in numbers from Amelie, and interest in French from Fran and other bits i’d really like to press on with. Must get out books again, must start up SOTW again. Hm.
Sounds pretty impressive on the maths front – are fraction circles those wooden/plastic circles divided up or something totally different? Pencil and sharpener monsters live here too – definitely going to start buying them wholesale!
Now i’ll go halves on you with that Claire!
They are plastic circles made by invicta but Fiona at absorbant minds sells them. Money well spent, i can recommend them.
Sounds very organised! We made our own fraction things with the circles on the bottom of pizza’s, very d-i-y-ish thou!Would’nt havea clue about ballet but I can untack a pony with baby in a sling!