I love having hours and hours of non-scheduled time. It happens extremely rarely. I always wonder whether I schedule too much for T however when I look at what we could take out - he and I both don't want to take away anything.
We have tennis for one hour Monday after school, chess Tuesday morning, swim squad for one hour Tuesday afternoon, cricket/soccer training Wednesday afternoon, piano lesson Thursday afternoon, acting class Friday morning, swim club Friday night, cricket match Saturday morning.
Definitely you could accuse me of overscheduling. T's number one love is cricket, probably followed by chess. Third would be tennis and then swimming probably. Swimming is tough - I think he loves it but it is probably the most work of all the sports. And of course piano is the most work of all so comes down low in the list of activities! Having said that he woke up this morning with the first words on his lips, in a very excited tone, "Piano concert today!". Also he has asked me at least three times this week to start his new piece (Sonatina in G by Beethoven) - though this morning when I said we would start, he said he didn't want to! Talk about "Stop it! I like it!" mentality.
So anyway apart from D having some kind of sleep deprivation induced man flu - we are all well! First time in 3 weeks. Last week we were in hospital with E. So first Sunday with all of us here and nothing on until the aforementioned piano concert at 2pm.
At school T is learning about sound and light this term. He has an awesome toy called the "Brainbox" which is an electrical circuit kit including light, LED, oscillating fan, sound box, two battery sets, fuses, various switches, connectors etc plus an instruction manual on how to set up all sorts of circuits. These range from basic (switch with light) to very complex (LED, light and sound box in parallel with fan that can oscillate either direction depending on how you set the switches).
On the wall at school is a poster of the difference between series and parallel circuits. So T and I spent a few moments looking at how this changes what works. For example, in series the fan won't work if the light bulb is missing, but will in parallel. I am not too good at explaining current but I did my best!
This all was going on as D cooked eggs, bacon and fries for breakfast. It was a bit hit and miss - T loved the eggs and bacon, E liked the bacon and W liked the fries. I of course ate it all, just to support D of course ...... D with man flu was too sick to partake .....
I picked up Pebble Maths again last night - I had got a bit lost the last time I read it. I managed to show T how to subtract 9 and 8 from any number in his head. He literally picked it up in 15 minutes. I did not have any pebbles lying around so I used lentils!
Not ideal as very finicky and they stick to your fingers. And E kept swiping them to eat them (crunchy? But I thought not harmful I hope.) However it will be interesting to see how well he retains the knowledge. Pebble maths and for that matter Vedic maths is all about mental calculation rather than rote learning or counting forwards/backwards. Before this morning T could tell me instantly that 19 - 9 was 10, but he kind of had to unlearn the way in which he did that (so that at first after using the new method this became hard). However now he can deduct 9 from any number up to 99 in his head instantly. We also did 8 but we focused on 9 so I imagine 9 will be easier tomorrow, though the method is identical with 9, 8 and 7.
I must say it is revolutionary and I will definitely keep it up - but may need to discuss with his teacher so that he doesn't get too confused with all the different methods being shown to him.
Man flu D just got called to a surgical case at lunch time - not sure now if he will make the concert. There goes my unstructured Sunday. Ah well quite a fun morning already and only 10am. I think it might have been a call from one of his mates and he is really just trying to avoid the mowing, and gutter cleaning scheduled for today! I think the MBA looked easier than real life at home with 3 children and an incapacitated pregnant wife!
Labels: Maths, Physics, Sundays, Suzuki piano
