Adventures in middle school math!

[Tanaqui]

So, sending her to a "real" school flopped, and here we are getting into homeschool for this year, for serious.

 

Working on the order of operations, she gets the general principle, but when she comes to (9-5) she balks. "I can't take nine from five!" Nevermind that we JUST COVERED negative numbers, like, yesterday... that's... not even what it's asking?

 

Five minutes of arguing later she finally concedes (sorta - "it'd make more sense the other way around!"), solves the entire problem. The answer, according to her scrap paper, is 195. She glances at her answer, and then carefully writes 194 on the page.

 

And it goes on like this for the entire page. "Five squared. Hm. That's thirty two!" "Um, no. Try again." "Oh, right, squared, got it. Five times five... that's... um... ten...."

 

But we persevered, and I made lunch, and I checked my email.

 

Then we had some good news! The theater program I signed her up for had one slot left after all! Now, you can believe I checked with her a dozen times before signing her up, but now she swears she said no each time, and I'm mean, and how could I.

 

I need to write this down for posterity. When she's grown, and she's dealing with her own kids going through puberty, she'll get a good laugh!

 

(I sure hope it's puberty. It's either that, or something serious is wrong.)

Edited September 19, 2017 by Tanaqui

[Miss Tick]

Oh I totally get you on the math conversations!

Her - The answer is ½!

Me - What does the problem say?

Her - 5^2/10*½=?

Me - ok, how do you start?

Her - well 10*½ is 5

Me - ok, now we have two things to talk about, let's stick with the problem as it is written, what is 5^2? Don't say 10! Just think about it for a moment!

Etc, etc

 

It is funny on the days I'm not crying in my coffee.

[klmama]

This is why we started using online courses for math. Having someone else to teach the material saves my limited math patience for helping with homework difficulties.

[Sneezyone]

This is exactly whyI will be outsourcing Algebra for DD next year, lol. We spent all of 5th and part of 6th playing that game before she was shipped off to regular school. She's done well there but, OMG! Can you imagine the teachers dealing with a class full of kids doing the same thing? Bless them.