After skating, at M's request we went and had a look at toy shops. It's her birthday coming up and she also won the 100 club draw at A's cricket club, so we had a cheque for £75 to pay into the bank (she withdrew £20 of it, so add to her already considerable savings that she's got at home). It was the first trip into town since our rethinking of the amount of freedom we let the girls have, and it was put to the test. Unlike around our home stomping ground, I wasn't happy to let them go off to different shops, but, when we got to John Lewis, I said to M that she could go on ahead to the toy department, on the floor below, if she wanted to. She did, but it turned out she wasn't entirely sure where she was going! When K & I reached the toy department, M was nowhere to be seen. I left K there, telling her to keep M with her if she turned up, while I went looking for M. I had a quick look, but couldn't see her, so hoping that she'd have made it to the toys, returned to see if she had, but no luck. At this point, I found a trio of members of staff and told them I'd lost my daughter, who was wearing a stripey black and white top and her name. They were excellent, asked me to stay in the toy department in case she appeared there and quickly set off to look for her. They were still within calling distance, when M came down the escalator with two other members of staff. She was perfectly calm and had very sensibly asked for help, the ladies had obviously been really good with her, one told me that they told M that they hadn't ever not managed to find a missing mummy yet. So all was fine and I was really proud and impressed that M had been so calm and sensible when she realised that she'd got lost.
K & I continued working through the topics in the maths book, with today's being 'minus numbers'. I had come up with an idea last night, when thinking about what we could do, and was feeling quietly confident that it was a good'un. First we talked about what minus numbers are, how they are not 'real' as you can't take 6 sweets from a back with 4 sweets in, for example. But you can have £5 and owe someone £7, so you have -£2. Then I got out a roll of lining wallpaper and drew on a number line from -6 to +6, with an arrow on the positive side with a plus sign pointing right and one on the negative side and a minus sign pointing left. Then I gave K a simple sum, such as 3 + 2 and asked her to use the number line to show how you get the answer. She started on the 3, turned to face the same way as the + arrow and took 2 steps forwards, to land on the 5. For 5 - 2, she started on the 5, turned to face the same way as the - arrow and took 2 steps forwards to end on the 3. Then we added in some negative numbers, first as the starting number. Then as the second number and K actually did what I had planned without me suggesting it. So with the example 6 + (-2), she started on the 6, faced the positive end and then walked backwards 2 steps to get to the answer 4. With (-3) - (-4), she started on -3, faced the negative end and then walked backwards 4 steps to get to +1. Then we talked about how when you have a - and a + together in the middle that is the same as a - and two - in the middle is the same as a +.
M was interested in having a go at this too, so we started off similarly and she showed that she understood the idea before we started, not only giving correct answers to subtractions with a negative answer, but also correctly adding and subtracting minus numbers. When we started on the number line though, M ended up confused, rather than finding it helpful as K had done. Whoops! I think we'd better have another look at the topic tomorrow before we move on.
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