Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Crocodiles and Cute Boys

My workmates hate me when it comes to drug calculating in work. I usually do the maths quickly in my head then say the answer. I usually can't explain how I did it or if I do, they don't understand. They then sit with pen, paper and calculator and take half an hour to come up with the answer I said

Its a talent..

However, neither Jessica or Bethan inherited my mathematical brain so maths' homework in our house is a nightmare. It usually ends up with tears, arguments and me pulling my hair out trying to explain things. It doesn't help that they seem to have changed the ways of doing things since I was in school. And yeah, I know that was a while ago

Earlier Bethan and I sat down to comparing and ordering decimals to two decimal places. She was working out less than and more than. I was trying to explain I remembered the <> by looking at the < and seeing it was like an L for less than. I drew pictures and everything.


But she just looked at me and said

No mummy, crocodiles

Crocodiles?

The crocodiles like to eat the big juicy numbers so his mouth opens wide to the big number

Ok.....Crocodiles. But crocodiles worked, she flew through them.

Double whammy night - Jess had maths as well. Simple revision she should have known, grids and mapping. But no, she sat there looking "bored" as only a 13 year old can. Knowing she knew it and just wanted me to do it for her so she could go on MSN, I tried to instill interest. I likened it to a treasure map.

Big sigh....

Then inspiration hit. If crocodiles can work for a 10 year old, what can work for a 13 year old?

BOYS - CUTE BOYS....

Ok, I said, the grid is a map of school, each co-ordinate is a cute boy - Go find the boys!!

I'm a bloody genius sometimes...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Loved this entry! The "cute boys" inspiration cracked me up.

I remember the crocodiles from my school days, too!

The way I keep the less-than/greater-than symbols straight is to remember that the "less-than" symbol looks like a scrunched-up letter "L" (as in Less-than).

Lisa said...

You had crocodiles?

I don't remember any crocodiles..

Anonymous said...

LOL, trust you to fix the screwed-up HTML and reveal the rest of your post about the "L", rendering my comment, uh, redundant :-P

Well, if it wasn't crocodiles it was definitely something related to some creature "eating" the big numbers. It never worked for me, though, I've stuck with the "L" to this day...

Lisa said...

Yeah, well you shouldn't be such a geek and have a feed reader
I edited it after like 3 seconds of posting and you still beat me

Mr. Gin and Tonic said...

wait, why would crocodiles prepfer big numbers. why wouldn't they like small ones?

Mr. Gin and Tonic said...

wait, why would crocodiles prepfer big numbers. why wouldn't they like small ones?

Anonymous said...

LMAO!!!!
If it wasn't for this feed reader, I'd hardly ever remember to come to this blog ;-)

Lisa said...

I dunno, cos there bigger, more meat perhaps?

Size does matter you know

Anonymous said...

i had crocodiles too! no cute boy grids though.. which is probably why i threw my pencil across the room every night, frustrated with math...

Lisa said...

Now Im feeling deprived because Im the only one that never had crocodiles..