A Chapter of Still More Incidents (Math Workshops and Nerf)

Catch up post…

We had this…

Fully booked, with over 200 parents signing up – which is often the case because Sure, “Everyone” Knows How To Do Primary School Math…. But The High Likelihood Is You May Not Know How To Teach It To Your Little Kid, to support their learning at home. (We are especially dependent on the school’s tips and trainings because Rockstar has managed to reach Y5 without ever stepping into a math tuition class.)

These things, the school talks, are – get this – absolutely free. So we’re kinda guilty of feeling flush from the tuition money we save.. (Can afford lotsa other school stuff). Also, it occurred to me that the staff put a lot of effort into all these things so they must really think it’s good for the kids under their care (because technically the parents are not under their care as well haha)

So too, a first instalment of the talk…

This one was during a talk by Maths Professor Peter Sullivan of Monash University, who had been working with the teachers… They also then had a talk for the parents…

Among others, they had us use the kids’ blocks to illustrate fractions

After that I went home and dug up Queen E’s wooden shapes toddler toys 😀

What stuck with me after these courses is:

a) Learning math is like using a “muscle” – the more you use it, the more “buff” you are; so they have a lot of suggestions on how to introduce math games into your every day life

b) Don’t tell your kid “I was never good at math” because they’ll maybe think “Ok, so I won’t be either,” or “ok, so I don’t have to be”

c) They always have the parents go through the math exercises that the kids have to do (yes I know not a few parents who secretly feel a little intimidated by this haha) and… when you manage to solve a Y5 or 6 math problem you feel 10 feet tall. Seriously. You feel like you want to keep doing this. You feel you should do it when you’re getting on the mini-bus, you feel like you want to repeat your feat to the people at home….. in other words you feel like how your kid should feel, when you’re supporting their schoolwork. Gotcha! 😀

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ok I feel like I need to make some amends…

Look Ma, no hands! The Partners in Crime do various experiments in a tub filled with Mustella baby oil because one of em has dry skin

Wait for it….

Yup, broke our shower. Not once…

…but twice. (Notice different coloured showerheads)

Its a built-in shower with the tube passing through the tiled platform. In other words, we are about to have major construction works in the bathroom for a second time. Y’know just in case you thought after the math bit earlier in this post maybe we were raising robots. 

Both kids are pretty hi-energy, and after watching them run or bounce about tirelessly, we’ve kinda decided to let them be monkeys. who they are. I mean, because free time is really important, which is why we don’t simply whisk ’em into all kinds of activities and classes one after another (I really do think too much tuition is more detrimental than useful – says the person who grew up with a lot of tuition because my parents and I had this deal, whereby I could take up any activities I wanted…… as long as I did the ones they wanted first. That meant I slept relatively little, and was out of regular class a lot, because – guess what – both parents and myself wanted to do a helluva lotta stuff. I had a lot of tuition by secondary school because I was often not in regular class, there were all kinds of activities I had to be out for)

But these two are just going to drive me batsh*t if they don’t have enough to do at home…

So after school Nerf date. *cough*

Queen E pops a few, but her real role is the important-est. She runs around with narry a care, in between all the lines of fire, picking up spent pellets in a ziplock and delivering the refills to the older boys. Since that’s what she really wants to do, I insist she wear her ski goggles (even though we have nothing that will even pop a balloon at close range).

This is Rockstar hiding in the doorway to ambush one of his friends (and behind him is the latest update of scribbles on our Graffiti toy Ikea cupboard that the kids can draw freely on.. )

(You may notice there is a lot more red on the scribble cabinet now… Because Queen E is in a red phase… y’know like when Picasso had the blue phase :P) and before anyone screams at me about letting these kids shoot up the place and random passersby/ neighbors (in school uniform some more), lemme explain that though there are regular anyone-can-join Nerf battles that go on around our huge development, our kids and their friends only do this in our or other friends’ apartments.

Dis issa rare pic in the doorway because they wanted to test the range of those things. our neighbouring unit is unoccupied, during construction works (yes, more noise)

We used to stick different coloured post-its around the apartment for different scoring (math!), but haven’t figured how to mark where the pellets hit without creating a serious mess (anyone have suggestions please let us know)…

And the raising of rockstars goes on…

(strides off into the sunset with….. is that a hockey stick peeking out of his bag? Story for another time… 😉 )

What tickles me is how many kids around us walk by and say, “Rockstar, you’ve taken up golf now?” 😀

ps: I became a lot more forgiving of Nerf guns after reading an interview with Nerf Ambassadors Dude Perfect, these strapping young college-age guys: they explained that the Nerfing and other ball sport trick shot activities kept them from the wild college partying that “everyone” seemed to be doing… A mum friend of mine then added that it also keeps the kids from too much screen time…