Art and Math

To make Blogger allow me to upload photos, I have to clear my browser history; every single freaking time!  It is starting to get a bit annoying and I am hoping that they are doing something about it behind the scenes but in the meantime, I am getting good at clearing my browser history!  I continue to be really pretty busy, trying to get things finished and organized in time for; transport of our stuff in two weeks, goodbye brunch in two weeks and leaving work in three weeks.  We fly out thirty eight hours after finishing work.  In the meantime, life goes on.  Levi had some art work in the Samford State School Art Festival.  He and his class made Australian animals out of clay.  Levi made a koala and I think it's fabulous!  He also made a Black Cockatoo out of his hand prints.  He was very proud and really wanted to go to the Art Show to show it off. 

 



 Today, Levi was playing with numbers again and I am reminded again why I am leaving this school.  He is playing with fractions at the moment.  He has worked out that 1/2 and 2/4 are the same and all the way to 8/16.  Then he plays with the numbers.  Tonight going to sleep, he wanted a sum and I gave him 45 + 77.  He had no difficulty and then wanted fractions.  I gave him 7 1/2 + 1 3/4 and after thinking a bit, he gave me 9 1/4.  Levi's math homework this week?  Adding in tens to 100 + 100.  Really?  He has been doing that since he was, oh I don't know, I don't remember.  It will be nice to get him to a system that may be able to give him reading at one level and math at another.  I don't have the luxury to be able to fully school him at home and I don't think that I would be very good at it either, but I am getting tired of stupid homework.  Levi has been tired of it for a while! 

Getting Negative

Levi has been playing around with numbers again and it is really fun to watch and help him.  He asked me about a week ago what happened below zero.  Once I worked out what he was asking, I explained that the numbers could go in the negative direction as far as they could go in the positive (ie. forever).  Since then his plus and minus sums are now a bit more interesting.

It started with things like 3 - 2 and about a day later it was things like 12 - 15.  Then yesterday he started something else -2 - 5.  You could watch the light go on in his eyes.  He said;

"When you count forward with minus numbers, you are actually counting backward!"

It was a very pretty way of putting it and certainly an easy way to explain it, that I will use again.  He has been happily playing with the numbers.  I wish he would play with words a little more, but I can't have everything.  He is actually reading better but I would love to see him get joy from it, the way I do.  I am getting ahead of myself again.  I mean really, he is just five, not twenty.  Maybe at some point when it is easier for him, he will start finding joy in it. 

He has been tired the last few days.  School really takes it out of you!  He has been a cranky butt and very fragile but between just going back to school and getting monster molars, I guess I can cut him a little slack.  I have had the last few days off while he was at school, in the attempt to get the yard winterised but it has been raining constantly.  It hasn't been hard enough to trap us in, but certainly hard enough to stop my doing any work with wet grass.  The causeway has been running freely over by about 10cm but doesn't look like it is getting vicious any time soon.