5 posts tagged “maths”

There were three children who, one morning, heard on the jungle drums that the village Post Office was selling footballs for £3.  Now they had burst their football and started excitedly emptying piggy banks to find the £3.  Boy 2 hasn't saved any money and so has to borrow from Boy 1 and they set out on bikes for the shop.  The Girl has her £1 at the ready.

Now The Girl doesn't trust the jungle drums and takes extra money.  The jungle drums have been wrong before!!  (always!).  When they arrive at the shop, the ball is in fact £5 and The Girl pays the extra.

Now they need to share the cost of the ball evenly.  Who owes who what??

This of course does not happen in real life - just in maths text books :-)

The time of year has come when home educators start scratching their heads and figuring out what curriculum to use for the new school year.  This seems a little odd to me because we don't need to keep with the school year and surely curriculum needs constant change, but it is a bit catching! 

We have just about finished the Schofield and Sims maths books and I am looking to find something else.  There is just not enough practice with the books we have at the moment.  We would not necessarily use all the extra worksheets etc but it is nice to have them incase we need them.  It saves me having to find extra resources on the internet.  Also S&S are not really set up as a curriculum.  We have loved them up to now but Callum has done all the Key Stage 2 books and he has a year to go.  I could start Key Stage 3 but then he may need to revisit the KS2 stuff to really understand it.

I have had a look at Math U See.  It looks like a really great programme but it is too teacher intensive.  I have 3 children at different stages and I just couldn't manage it.  A fair amount of any curriculum needs to be self teaching.  Singapore Maths is a definite favourite at the moment.  There is also the Galore Park books but I need to see them.

I would love to be able to look at all these books and compare.  If I purchase books and they are not suitable or the wrong level then I have wasted my money.  I would love to be able to go to a fair of some sort where all the curriculum was laid out for me to thumb through and consider.  I am doing this a bit blind!  At £13 each, some of them could be a bit expensive to have sat on the shelf looking pretty!

Then a fellow home educator suggested MEP which looks great.  You print the worksheets from the website and best of all it is free.  We may try this for a bit and see how we get on.  However, it is teacher intensive again which may not work for us. 

I am sure that Ewan could continue with the books he is doing.  The others need something more.  The search continues......

The problem with encouraging children to think for themselves is that they start thinking for themselves.  Then you have to keep on your toes or you can't keep up with them!  Today we have Ewan deciding that he can't write the letter Q so he will stop using it.  I like the logic - if you decide not to use it then you don't need to learn how to write it.  He says there are not many words with Q in them.  Also true but you may find there are more than you think!  He will just use different words. Let's hope he doesn't become an editor or typesetter or indeed anything literary!

He was working away at putting letters in alphabetical order until he stopped and stated:

"I won't use this in real life!"

True that he probably will not have to do that exact exercise but it might be useful to know your alphabet for the dictionary etc.  So much that we try to teach our children seems to be a waste of time to them.  Actually, I am finding that the workbooks and exercises are less and less useful.  They are good for the structure but they go over the same ground so many times!  I am fed up with it so they must be. 

Here comes the challenge! How to keep up the momentum to teach the children in an exciting way.  Teachers must suffer from this all the time.  We try to take the children out to plenty of different places and do different activities, but not all learning can be covered like that.  Or can it??

Callum is converting currency.  Actually the maths is pretty hard - for me anyway!  He battles away for half an hour and then, just as he finishes, he says:

"In real life, I would use a calculator!"

Well maybe but it is still a useful skill to be able to work out how many dollars you would get for £50 if the rate is 1.74 (this was one of the questions!).   He did it much faster than me.  He can think differently.  There I am working out 50 x 1.74 and he just multiplies 1.74 by 100 and halves it!!  He WILL use this in "real life" - whatever that is!!

Ln has got us into postcrossing!  Thanks Ln!

You sign up to Postcrossing.com and they give you an address to send a postcard to.  There is a code on the postcard and they enter it into the website when they get your card.  That way we can learn about other parts of the world and improve our geography the fun way.  We have to send our first card to Finland (I had to have a quick peek at the map before I showed the kids - just to make sure it is where I think it is!!).  Off we go in the freezing cold to buy postcards.  I hope there is one stamp for international postcards.  The postoffice see my kids almost daily as it is with the Bookmooch!

They are learning Geography, maths, getting exercise and meeting new people.  I am all for this!!

We have started to meet some lovely people locally which is nice.  The kids are settled into Brownies and Scouts so they are feeling happier.  Slowly things are happening.  It was difficult moving in before Christmas because everybody was busy with their own lives and the usual avenues for making friends were not there.  We now have people to visit and friends to call on which is great.

We also met some home educating friends at the Swindon Group.  They meet regularly and seem very friendly.  They made us feel very welcome and the kids played really well together.  Home educated kids seem to manage to organise themselves well.  Not that others don't but I think they spend a lot more time entertaining themselves.  It was lovely to talk to some people who had home educated for a long time and had seen the results.  On those days when it seems like an uphill struggle remembering their children will keep me going.

Today we have had the usual struggle with writing.  I am ashamed to say that we haven't finished our thank you letters yet.  Well Ewan hasn't!  The others are in the envelopes waiting for Ewan's.  We have done some maths which was good.  Isobel is finding some of it hard which is unusual for her.  I will have to think of another way to explain it all.  Sometimes that is all that is needed.  Maybe we will move on to something else and come back to it.  I don't want her to worry about one area of her maths and let it cloud everything else.

Anyway we are off to the local lake to float the remote control boats.  I have told them that if they let the battery run out in the middle of the lake, I am not going in to get it.  Stuart will tell you that lakes in January can be very cold!!  We will see.....