Monday, July 09, 2007

Amazing Math....

As any one of my family members can tell you...I am a planner. I love to be organized and have every detail worked out. I am not the best at "going with the flow." I am the one who wants to control the spigot. So far, this has been pretty hard when parenting. I was doing pretty well throughout most of my adult life. Then all three of my children decided to make their own plans on when they thought their deliveries should occur and it pretty much has been downhill from there. Where is all this going...well...

I am now officially compacting math curriculum for Haley. She has been complaining lately about needing harder math. So I spent a couple hours reviewing the 1st and 2nd grade math curriculums I have and set about to make a plan. She had about 10 topics left to learn in 1st grade math (as of this morning, during which she mastered 3 in 3 minutes) .

This morning my goal was for her to understand the concept of 1/4th and to learn to tell time to the half hour on an analog clock. Well, the analog clock thing took all of 2 seconds. I showed her how to do half past 3 and she said, "Oh, then half past 6 would be this. (As she formed it on the clock.) And half past 10 would be this...." and so on and so on for every hour all out of order.

I then showed draw a square and divided it into four pieces and shaded in one part. I told her that it is "one out of four or 1/4th" and showed her how to write it. She then took off with that, saying, "Well, if I divided a circle into 6 pieces and shaded in one it would be one out of six and it would look like this (as she wrote it)." She went on to figure out one out of pretty much every fractional part up to 1/13th, got bored with that, then figured out how it would be written to show more than one shaded. She has figured out not just 1/4th but the concept of fractions completely. (Learning 1/3 and 1/6 was supposed to be another day's learning. )

I thought I had the whole compacting thing figured out. So much for scheduling. I guess I just need to follow her lead and let her learn at whatever rate she wants. This is really hard for me, the ultimate planner to do.

1 comment:

girlscout said...

I to, am a planner. Katherine's delivery was not like I had planned and the adoption happening after the pregnancy was not liked I had planned. So we are on the same page there.

Katherine has asked me many times to explain multiplication to her. I give a small example and remind her she needs to know subtraction first. But, I guess that is me just trying to plan things again.

I guess our children are just helping us get out of our comfort zones.
-betsy