That’s the third day running we’ve gone into town. It’s about half a mile there and back, with hills to add that little bit of extra, and of course on Monday, we did the library as well, granted that’s only around the corner, but still, it’s a walk. It means despite the grotty weather, we’ve been out and about on foot in the (very!) fresh air, and that’s got to be good for us, surely?
We saw the post van at the postbox before we got there, so thought we’d missed the post, but there turned out to be a later collection, so all was well. I just hope the post office can read Small’s writing! I did go over the house number and the postcode was pretty clear, so it should be OK.
When we got back, I decreed it maths time. In order to have success we have indeed returned to basics, and Big has been working on her 2x table. We had a breakthrough when I pointed out that if she knows the answer to some of those, she knows the answer to some divisions, she just needs to go backwards iyswim (she did, so I’m not too worried about my terminology 😉 ). I’m amazed that she’s never made that connection, or had it made for her, but she was well chuffed to discover she can do some divisions in her head, so she got quite excited and we carried on for ages, with her working out her own multiplication square. We found out a number of other facts in the process, and I showed her some other patterns, and all in all, she was very much happier after going on for an hour of that, and I could see that there might be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel 🙂
Then it was Small’s turn. We looked at some more additions and began to look at some of the ways of looking at them that will allow him to progress beyond the simple sums. Tomorrow we’re going to make some montessori style place value cards together as he seems to have bypassed that step (not surprising, he was reluctant to do anything maths based at school and certainly didn’t do anything in the elementary classroom last term. It’s one of the reasons that I’m so surprised at how eager he is at home.) That will help him stop doing all his additions from scratch right the way to the answer I hope, although he already got the idea of counting on from the bigger number today as well.
And in and amongst that, I worked on my first assignment too. I’d mailed the tutor I met in Leeds at the open day and she sent me the preparatory assignment, although without the revision booklet, and I’ve been looking through that. Pretty much all of it is familiar to me, apart from the occasional question, so I’m hopeful that I should be OK with this course as long as I get myself organised. Famous last words. Who else is OU-ing this year? We can set each other up a little cheering squad 🙂
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