The Joy of Maths
Saturdays question on the SHE Forum went along the lines of learning new things or relearning since you’ve been home-edding. Well today I certainly did that.
Eden did some of her Maths workbook this morning and I looked over it with her to make sure she understood what she had to do.
The page said to "Rename" these sums. Well I looked, and I looked again and thought I’ve never heard of it. This is a workbook for an eleven year old, I can’t do it, how on earth am I going to teach her up to sixteen years old? Upon further investigation it would appear that all it is is borrowing from the next column along when the top number isn’t higher than the number underneath! In my day it was called " Borrowing one" So that was sorted, she picked it up pretty quickly, I marked them and then we turned to another page. Now we had to " Regroup" the sums. Lordy me, I looked and looked again. It means that you have to carry one over if the column of figures you add up totals more than ten. In my day known as " Carrying one over" We had to put our figure at the bottom of the next column but apparantly nowadays you have to put it over the top of the next column.
I’m explaining this and assuming that those of you reading are my age and didn’t know this, so if you’re cleverer than me, which really wouldn’t be that hard an accomplishment I do apologise!
So I’ve learnt two new things today.
Cody was an absolute nightmare today, he’s going through a screaming stage, if you take something away from him, you don’t let him have something he wants or he just wants to wind me up, he stands there and does this high pitched scream, as I type he’s doing it because he wants Solomans toy car! I’ve tried telling him "No" firmly, ignoring him and even resorted to screaming back to him, which resulting in him screaming longer and louder than I did!
The top three children did really well despite the distraction of him screaming.
They all wrote letters to their Nan and we posted them, Soloman even wrote a few "S" s for her. Then they all did some Maths, I was impressed with Clark, his subtraction is going really well. Eden did all this new fangled stuff I’ve been on about!!
We went to Grandmas this afternoon where I read Peter Pan and the boys read their school books to me. They were so pleased with their own work this morning that they took their workbooks to Grandmas and did some more. I think Eden has done about five hours of Maths today, I’m happy to let her do it, by next week I expect I’ll be lucky to get five minutes out of her!
Blogring:
Brilliant photos below, hope the casualty was ok in the end.
As for the maths, I did GCSE maths in 2005 and it was called borrowing one then! It’s weird the funny names some of these books come out with isn’t it, lol!
Comment by Linda — September 4, 2008 @ 6:05 am
Linda, Glad it was called that in 2005, I thought it was an age thing! Now I can confidently say it isn’t!!
I’ve been looking in the Echo for the helicopter landing story so that we could follow it through but I’ve not seen anything yet.
Comment by Administrator — September 4, 2008 @ 8:56 am
Ive noticed that Math curriculum has all these correct ways to say stuff now. Why cant they just say what they mean? I so agree with you on the frustration of it.
Comment by Mrs darling — September 4, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
I often come across this with Katie’s maths (she’s 11 too and just finished a 10-11 workbook) and also they seem to do things differently, say, long multiplication. Her maths book set out three different ways to do this to totally confuse her, poor love, in the end I showed her how I was taught and she picked it up immediately. I guess as long as she gets the correct answer, it shouldn’t really matter how she got to it (and as long as the all important working out is shown - something my 9 year old finds really difficult, he does everything in his head).
Elle
Comment by Elle — September 8, 2008 @ 5:39 pm