In the swing of it

After four weeks of work I think we're finally finding a routine for the new school year. Yesterday I was just contemplating the different levels of maths I seem to be involved in. Mike has been exploring the units, tens and hundreds houses on Decimal Street (à la Math U See) whilst Matt has been doing online maths. One of his tasks this week was working out time problems such as: What is the time 121 hours and 12 minutes after Sunday, 7:55 PM? Just one question like that is time consuming enough for a 10 year old, but 10 questions like that in a row was just too much. Just to add to it all if you don't get 10/10 you don't get a "perfect" rating and have to do 10 questions again if you are an obsessive compulsive person about maths (like Matt). Thankfully Matt had 100% and a 'perfect' first time around.

Maybe that was why Matt objected when I asked him to resume maths after a short break yesterday. "But Mummy, I'm doing something really important at the moment." Apparently rummaging through Lego boxes to find just the right piece for a Lego project is more important than getting one's schoolwork done.

Meanwhile Lloyd has chosen to do pure maths for his senior high school years. Anika only did applied maths. Lloyd is finding the maths a little difficult so each day I'm doing the lesson with him. Yesterday we were looking at hybrid functions and working out taxi driver charges. I did a little pure maths at university but that was in the good old days before them there fancy new-fangled graphics calculators. I've named Lloyd's one "The Beast". It just turns out that the recommended text gives instructions for every calculator except The Beast which was the recommended one. It came with a 3 cm thick manual which claims to give instructions on its use. The manual may as well have been written in ancient Hittite for all the help it is. The free download tutor is little better. Thankfully we have access to a human ancient Hittite interpreter (a maths teacher at our chosen distance school of enrolment) and she is an expert. As each step is mastered I type plain English instructions into a Word document to keep for future reference.

As I looked at my less-than-perfectly clean kitchen this morning (I have a little of Matt's OCD) I reminded myself of the important things that did get done this week and of one of my favourite quotes from G K Chesterton:

When domesticity is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning of the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit that the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral at Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up... To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness. (ca.,1910.) Michael Ffinch, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), 1986 p. 182