Those of you who know my K will know that she's not one to do what's expected of her. She's marches to the beat of her own drum as the saying goes, I believe. This generally isn't a problem, mostly she will happily engage in activities in her own way and it's generally a way that doesn't particularly inconvenience others as she'll often just sit back and observe or use the materials provided for a craft activity to do something of her own design rather than that intended for example. Frequently, however, I have not got a clue what's going on in her head and on more than one occasion during a post-altercation cuddle I have told her that I sometimes struggle to understand her, to which she has replied that sometimes she doesn't understand herself. It can be difficult when trying to help her understand how to do something, I'm thinking particularly of maths here, when she has been unwilling or unable to explain how she has reached an answer to something. I have found this frustrating at times, particularly if she's got something wrong and I can't work out whether she's just made an error in calculation or if she's misunderstood the question or if she's completely failed to grasp a concept. Yesterday we had a bit of a break through when buying milk. We'd done a bit of maths, calculating change, in another shop and I said that the reason we buy our milk from M&S is because they frequently have a good deal on their organic 4 pint cartons, which are £1.79 each or two for £3. I asked K & M how much you saved by buying two at a time rather than two individually and said that I would add £1.80 twice and take away 2p to get the answer and K said that she would add two lots of 29p. A little bit of questioning showed that she used the fact that she knew half of £3 was £1.50 and was working from there. This may seem like a little thing, but for me it was really helpful as I was able to use it to talk about different ways of finding answers and how when she tells me how she gets to answers, I can see how she's worked it out and therefore if she's right how she got there and if she's made a mistake I can help her see where she went wrong and so avoid that mistake in the future, which since she hates getting questions like this wrong is a good thing! She's now 9 and has matured a lot over the past few years, I couldn't have imagined having this conversation not all that long ago.
In other news, today we had a couple more chapters of Harry Potter. I'm being strict about only two chapters per day at the moment because I've got a stinky cold which has brought a bit of a sore throat with it. K & I had a look at our one of our body books, when she asked where our noses and mouths are joined. So we looked at that and also at what happens when you breathe and when you swallow and also how I saw my own vocal chords on a screen when I went to see an ENT specialist recently. M and I played a game of Carcassonne, she won despite moaning that I was doing too well during the game! And of course, our busy Thursday afternoon meant a couple of hours of gymnastics and a half an hour swimming lesson.
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