Kid Bits
Some various things about my children.
Scary thoughts
My oldest son turned 16 last month. He has his learner's permit, but is not excited about the thought of learning to drive. I suspect that he doesn't want the "privilege" of getting to ferry his brother and sister everywhere. However, I finally got around to notifying our insurance company - I thought they'd like to know! The other day we got a revised version of our auto policy, with his name on there as "Driver #03! Now that's something scary!
In other "growing up" news: Last fall he took the PSAT test. He did moderately well. (Yes, I admit my expectations are pretty high.) That also got his name on "lists." Today he received his first piece of mail from a college - Washington and Lee University in Virginia. (As it happens, I actually know someone in the industry who attended that school!) I'm sure this is only the first drop of an eventual deluge. Tonight I was trying to imagine sending him as far away as Virginia to attend college, and my mind boggled. I suddenly realized how unprepared he is at this point to take care of himself in the wider world, which then tells me that my husband and I have our work cut out for us in the next couple years.
A girl after my own heart
My daughter is a whiz at math, which she comes by honestly. Recently she had the thrill of learning about tangents. The next day she was rather discouraged when doing her homework, and I asked what was wrong. "Mom," she said, "My mentor wants me to use my calculator when I do these, but I don't want to. Using a calculator makes the problems too simple - I want to exercise my brain!"
Far be it from me to keep her from exercising her brain!. She was certain there must be a way to do the problems by hand. I assured her there was, and showed her the table of sines, cosines and tangents in the back of the book. (Opposite that page was a table of square roots. All numbers were to four decimals places. She exclaimed something like, "Just look at all those numbers!") She was delighted to learn to read the table and happily worked all her problems by hand that night. As the problems got more complex in later assignments, she finally started using the calculator because it made the work so much faster and she had other things she wanted to do with her time.
Sharing the love
My favorite part of math was imaginary numbers. Imaginary. Numbers. How much better can you get? My son's advanced algebra class finally got to those and I had an opportunity to explain to him why I thought they were so cool. He loved the idea and dove into his assignment, exclaiming, "I'm actually having fun doing my math!" My daughter wandered in to the middle of the explanation, so I explained the basic definition to her (an imaginary number is the square root of a negative number) and how they work. She loved it also. She's only in prealgebra now, but when she gets to imaginary numbers in a couple years, she'll be ready!
Scary thoughts
My oldest son turned 16 last month. He has his learner's permit, but is not excited about the thought of learning to drive. I suspect that he doesn't want the "privilege" of getting to ferry his brother and sister everywhere. However, I finally got around to notifying our insurance company - I thought they'd like to know! The other day we got a revised version of our auto policy, with his name on there as "Driver #03! Now that's something scary!
In other "growing up" news: Last fall he took the PSAT test. He did moderately well. (Yes, I admit my expectations are pretty high.) That also got his name on "lists." Today he received his first piece of mail from a college - Washington and Lee University in Virginia. (As it happens, I actually know someone in the industry who attended that school!) I'm sure this is only the first drop of an eventual deluge. Tonight I was trying to imagine sending him as far away as Virginia to attend college, and my mind boggled. I suddenly realized how unprepared he is at this point to take care of himself in the wider world, which then tells me that my husband and I have our work cut out for us in the next couple years.
A girl after my own heart
My daughter is a whiz at math, which she comes by honestly. Recently she had the thrill of learning about tangents. The next day she was rather discouraged when doing her homework, and I asked what was wrong. "Mom," she said, "My mentor wants me to use my calculator when I do these, but I don't want to. Using a calculator makes the problems too simple - I want to exercise my brain!"
Far be it from me to keep her from exercising her brain!. She was certain there must be a way to do the problems by hand. I assured her there was, and showed her the table of sines, cosines and tangents in the back of the book. (Opposite that page was a table of square roots. All numbers were to four decimals places. She exclaimed something like, "Just look at all those numbers!") She was delighted to learn to read the table and happily worked all her problems by hand that night. As the problems got more complex in later assignments, she finally started using the calculator because it made the work so much faster and she had other things she wanted to do with her time.
Sharing the love
My favorite part of math was imaginary numbers. Imaginary. Numbers. How much better can you get? My son's advanced algebra class finally got to those and I had an opportunity to explain to him why I thought they were so cool. He loved the idea and dove into his assignment, exclaiming, "I'm actually having fun doing my math!" My daughter wandered in to the middle of the explanation, so I explained the basic definition to her (an imaginary number is the square root of a negative number) and how they work. She loved it also. She's only in prealgebra now, but when she gets to imaginary numbers in a couple years, she'll be ready!