When Home Schooling is Looking Like a Good Idea

Last night my daughter and I were playing a couple of hands of the card game UNO. We had some really loud thunderstorms move through last evening and the power flickered on and off a couple of times and the satellite service was disrupted, so we turned off the TV (Aghast!) and decided to actually interact and play a game together.

My daughter wanted to be the scorekeeper, which I fully supported. What better way for children to hone their math skills than when engaged in an activity they enjoy and practicing math in a practical, real world kind of way. Once the scores got larger she had to wrack her brain to remember how to add the larger numbers. Damn you summer break! She couldn't remember why you had to carry the one and why sometimes you had to carry the one and other times you did not.

So, I took a few moments to give her some addition examples to illustrate the differences. I basically broke it down by explaining that when you add the last digits together and they equal to a number of 10 or greater you have to carry the one which actually represents 10. So, we worked a few problems together that required carrying the one and some that did not so she could see the difference. I think I actually saw the light bulb shine over her head when she finally understood the concept.

Mind you, she has learned this type of addition in school, but they were teaching them some screwy way of adding. For example, if you had: 154 + 59, they would have the kids add the 4 and the 9 and write that number down. Then they would add the 5 and 5 together and write that number below the first number. Then they would write the 100 down under that and then add those three numbers together. It just seemed like taking the long way to arrive at an answer. I guess they wanted the kids to get the concept of hundreds, tens and ones and how they were related, but it seemed kind of stupid to me.

After my little math lesson last night, my daughter turned to me and said: "Mommy, you're such a good teacher. It took my teachers 3 days to teach us that and it only took you three minutes to teach me." My first feeling was pride. My daughter, albeit somewhat incredulous to my teaching abilities, had given me a compliment. Then I was overcome with a feeling of dread, because I thought about all the other things she has been taught in school that I could do a much better job of teaching her.

Like using a fake ID or opening beer bottles without a bottle opener or throwing parties when her parents aren't home. You know, the stuff I'm really good at.