Thursday, January 13, 2005

Very Quickly...

I was going to bed an hour ago, but two 'phone calls later...

Anyway, today we went out at 9am (how impressive is that!!) to run errands in town. We paid to many bills - when I eventually remembered my P.O. card account pin number to get the money out (pregnancy block!!). Bought Joel some new trainers which are just TOO cool, so he's a happy bunny :) Bought them both a cake in Chatwins and a pasty for me. Then put Joel's old shoes in the shoe recycle bin at Safeway and did a little bit of 'social ed' by making them read the sticker on the bin which explains what will be done with them. Then we went into Safeways where Jacob noticed the mountain of baskets stacked by the door.
J - "Look Mum, there must be about 60 baskets there!"
M - "No, a good few more than that I'd say."
J - " A hundred?"
M - "OK let's do some Maths - estimation - count the number of baskets in the middle size stack."
J - "24"
M - and how many stacks are there?"
J - "9."
M - "OK, so how many baskets are there?"
J - "24 x 9 ... I can't do that, it's too hard! And not all the stacks have 24 baskets in them so it won't be right."
M - " No, it will not be exactly right; it will be an estimation - a close guess. To work out the answer break down the numbers. 24 is 10 & 10 & 4 isn't it?"
J - " yes."
M - " so 10 x 9 ?"
J - "90 ... + another 90 that's 180"
M - " plus the 4 x 9..
J - "36... 180 + 36. That's 216. WOW!! That's a LOT of baskets. I was nowhere near when I said 60!!"

Maths lesson over - we had multiplication, addition and estimation covered in five minutes!!

As we really didn't do much more school today (about 30 mins just finishing off left-overs) I was pleased we had squeezed that in :)

Also while we were out today a lot of 'social' education happened. That is, me telling the boys what is and isn't acceptable behaviour in the street and any other public place for that matter, and how they should learn to walk along nicely like normal human beings, not leaping about and behaving like orangutans!! :)

Not much else to report today. The kids are still being really good at chores etc... :)

1 comment:

Caroline said...

it's made easier by Jacob knowing his 10 x tables and his 4 x tables. I wanted him to get a fairly accurate estimation and we have covered estimation 'in school' time. If he wasn't so good at maths and was a bit younger I might have done 25 x 10, but that would have actually included another process - 'rounding up' first and Jacob has a very concrete mind, so he would have struggled to understand why we would do that if that was NOT what our eyes could see! Believe me this was actually simpler for him!!