Tuesday, September 9, 2008

If you could see me now

you could probably detect the smile that I cannot fully hide. You see, I am sitting across the table from a young fellow who is doing math, math he has chosen to do.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought Your Business Math, Pet Store from Simply Charlotte Mason. Yesterday he picked a logo for his store and we decorated his business notebook. Today he began to set up the business. While I am doing other important things, like blogging and reading blogs, he is setting up his inventory and making price tags, which requires figuring a markup of 100 or 150%. This is not hard math for him but it does require him to both read and do mental math and these are not tasks he seeks to do. And he is excited and having fun. Jasper is hoping not to be part of the inventory.

This year we are doing math in a more gentle way, Life of Fred Fractions and probably Decimals, before the year is out. I am adding in the Pet Shop and some puzzles and games. I also have lesson plans from Julie at Living Math that I plan to start gradually as part of our history. We are reading math daily, Murderous Maths, The Essential Arithmetricks right now.

I am reading math myself, The Joy of Mathematics by Theoni Pappas. PRM

2 comments:

Dawn said...

I'm beginning to think I should simply buy whatever you buy. :D That Pet Store math looks wonderful and when I told my daughter about it her eyes lit up.

We're already enjoying Life of Fred and Ellen McHenry's Elements thanks to you, might as well pick that up too!

Ruth in NC said...

We have had good luck with some choices this year, Fred and Elements. Certainly not all years go as smoothly. And not all subjects are going as well either, Spanish being a case in point.

Noach, on his own, did a whole month of Pet Store transactions today. At the rate he's going, he'll finish in a couple of weeks. We may have to to do the book store next.