My darling son, dubbed by a fellow RVB as Weather Lad, is driving me insane with his school work. Turns out, on this front anyway, he's got more of his father in him than he does me. I was the 'perfect' elementary school student: If we got a project assigned, it was finished the first night. I saved all my drafts, just in case, and followed whatever format I needed, no matter how seemingly ridiculous. Weather Lad, not so much. He questions everything: "Why do I have to do the math this way? My way makes just as much sense." "Why should I save my rough drafts? She didn't say I had to." I'm sensing a few battles breaking out over the next few years.
The kicker at the moment, though, is his multiplication tables. "Why do I need to learn these? I can just look them up."
HA! Gotcha! "Multiplication and division are so much easier if you can just rattle off the answers."
I wasn't expecting the I-told-you-so moment so soon.
Fractions. Reducing them, to be precise. 42/63 is much easier to do quickly if you know your 7s by heart. His resigned look was satisfaction enough. I helped.
I think mumma is going to have to turn into a task master on this one. We need to master these facts, and quicly. It's not likely to be fun, but that's ok. He'll thank me for it when he gets to Algebra.
1 comment:
Weather Lad has a point.... but as one of his future math teachers, I am glad that you are getting him to memorize "the facts".
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