Today is Lasagna day. I’m making a bunch of it for us and another family.
Yesterday I was able to get the Math-U-See package I have wanted for awhile. A very long time ago, a few years ago –that is, I got the first level of the above stated product. I haven’t used it and lost the VHS tape and only had watched one lesson before losing it, and don’t use a VCR anymore in the first place (have one and COULD use it, but don’t have it hooked up and I wouldn’t WANT to use it for Math-U-See lessons!)
I looked up Math-U-See more recently online and noted that they do now have DVD’s but their program has been updated, and there is no DVD for the first level as I have it. So I’m ditching that and going with BETA for all three children. My youngest is too young, but will benefit as he can, and might spring ahead (since he IS a very smart young man) and in any case will be there at the spot he needs to be to use BETA on his own if not with his siblings.
All the children are natural number interest savvy children, as I and their daddy are. We aren’t “great” at it all, just facinated with it and see much in it, just for DH and me that we didn’t have the right instruction in school to gain better usage of it. Math-U-See is the right approach for us, I want to give my children the advantage in maths that I didn’t have, to just “get it” in the way they can, not have some rote definition placed on their shoulders as THE ONLY WAY. I am providing Math-U-See to them so that someone more savvy can show us what it means, how to do it, and that’s cool. Seeing math is important, and I never had cuisinaire rods to work with, only my fingers, and they are still my friends in many cases of numbering even today. :rolleyes: I don’t HAVE to use them all the time, just DO sometimes. I also have a block in some maths somewhat due to 4th grade class punishment with multiplication tables being written out and written out and written out on and on, for talking when teacher was in hall with another teacher. Hmph. It was horrible for me, since little introverted 4th-grade me was just sitting there quietly keeping to myself during that hub-bub. She, the teacher, didn’t recognize that, but did recognize one person as NOT being bad and didn’t have to do the work, but HE was being noisy during the hub-bub. That bothered me and I can understand that from this side of life, I was INTP then, just didn’t know about it in the mid-70’s (not until the past few years really.) So did I do that work? I fretted over it and my best friend was in a different class and she had compassion on me and wrote them out for me. What a friend! 🙂
So I’ve had a chip on my shoulder since then, and being a P (INTP) I do struggle with wanting/needing visual understanding of those silly scribes that are numbers. I need to see the ideas, and I get it fast, but don’t do the long maths well, it’s a struggle, it hurts my head. Not that I can’t do it, I hate it, it’s stupid when I know I can get it fast from a different perspective if it’s allowed.
I wish they knew what I know about it. So since they didn’t, it’s my turn to learn this stuff better now, with my children.
Today is Lasgna day though. Lots of lasagna making and with the children then, the normal way of numbering, whatever they are doing always involves numbers at some point, and if they are watching me, invariably something numbering comes up when I’m cooking, for sure, even when I’m cooking as I usually do, without measuring or recipes, though I do use recipes often enough, I rarely use one precisely though. Starting soon it will be something I want to do: have one of the eldest two children measure my “on the fly” cooking, to develop actual amounts to replicate in the future, for me or them. This is the sort of numbering we do all day long, converting numbers and things having to do with food, temperatures, scrapbooking, watching hurricanes, etc.
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