Back To School

As part of our application to renew our registration for Homeschooling, our Board of Studies inspection took place 2 weeks ago. We had a very pleasant home visit with Mr W who is a retired school principal. Tony, myself, and the children, had the opportunity to share some of our thoughts and experiences from the past 2 years of our Home Education journey; and the children were enthusiastic about displaying some of their projects and display folders of subjects they had studied during this time.

I also explained how I schedule our learning times, and how I record what has been completed each day. Then I discussed with him the new programme I have planned. He commented that everything was "excellent", complimented me some more, and then wrote up a little report recommending that our application be approved for another 2 year period!

Yahoo, yippee, YAY!!

Such relief, because I do have to admit to a certain level of nervousness about the whole process. However, Mr W is a really lovely man, and very open to diverse ways of learning. He is encouraging of our lifestyle decision, and said he can see the progress the children have made. As well, he made the children feel comfortable and showed genuine interest in their work.


PS ... I thought I would also share with you the little chat we had about subtraction. Maths is not Sarah's strongest subject, and she experiences 'forgetfulness' when it comes to some basic arithmetic if we do not practice it regularly (as in when we move on to a different strand - not when we just drop maths!) On the other hand, Daniel seems to have a good handle on it, and midway through last year he was moving onto subtraction with regrouping. What followed was certainly interesting!I shared some of our experiences relating to subtraction, particularly my inability to make sense of my own method - and to explain it to the children and myself! I had learnt to do 'borrowing and paying back' when I was at school, and I don't have any issues with this method, which gives correct answers...I just could not, for the life of me, explain WHY you had to plus the bottom number in the tens column. Why are we plussing when we are subtracting?? Gosh, I hope I haven't confused you here! Example
85 -
27

You can't take 7 from 5, so I borrow from the tens column and 5 becomes 15 so 7 from 15 = 8, which you write down

85 -
27
----
8

Now the tricky part to explain: Nearby the 2 I add a little 1 (the payback) then I say...2+1=3, next, 3 from 8 = 5 written as

85 -
27
---
58

Correct answer. But when it came to explaining why I ADD 1 to 2 ... well, I have absolutey no idea!!


At the time this problem led me into research about different methods for doing subtraction with what is now called 'regrouping'. I was reading about the decomposition method, the equal addends method, and all along the children and I were trying them out...but in the end, it was a demonstration a friend showed us with the Math U See blocks, which made the most sense, and really helped to cement understanding for them. Three days of using the blocks, and Sarah put them away - and has not forgotten how to borrow/carry/trade/regroup - whatever you want to call it, since! Daniel is still sometimes using the blocks, and his demonstration for the BoS inspector was fantastic!

Math U See is extremely popular in homeschooling circles. We don't use the MUS curriculum, but I had an opportunity to buy the blocks second-hand ... and I am SO glad I did!

http://www.mathusee.com/