I missed doing this earlier, but you’re a time traveller so it’s OK, right? My favourite is the last part of number 2.
What else has been going on? A has been devouring the orange that Katy had planned to eat herself (see Flickr). Colds and sore throats – including A’s first – meant things were more subdued / grumpier than usual. Nice conversation with J at bed time last night. I have realised that while I think they are Father Educating His Son chats, they are actually me fulfilling my destiny by turning into my dad, while J’s eyes glaze over.
I still remember dad asking me to write him a program on our ZX Spectrum to work out some stats for him, but it meant he had to teach me about cumulative frequency first. He would often come to help me with my homework and then continue talking about related stuff he found interesting but that wasn’t actually helping me get my homework done and dad please get I get on with it now?
Last night’s conversation with J was prompted by questions in an advert on the back of the please-give-us-all-your-money alumnus magazine Katy and I get. (It was advertising the Oxford-Cambridge rugby match, but looked like an exam paper.)
So we had a physics questions about two rugby players colliding and with what speed would the lighter player bounce back? I assumed the heavier player stopped still and there was no loss of momentum, so got the answer via conservation of momentum. Many of the people reading this have better maths and physics than me, so please correct me. Actually, I’ve just checked and Wikipedia has done the correcting for me. *sigh* I know just enough to be dangerous.
Then a maths question about the cube root of the Ticketmaster phone number. I had to back-track a bit and explain square numbers and square roots, and then cubic numbers and finally cube roots.
The last one we did was a history one, asking what date would the match be on if we hadn’t switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian one. I had no idea, but mentioned to J that that was one of the things we were discussing at Kentwell in the summer as it was pretending to be 1583 (see the links). He perked up at this – not because of the historical significance or his thirst for knowledge, no it was because if we go back next year he’ll be of the age where he gets to have his own knife as he’d start learning a trade and not be with us all the time. *sigh* again.
rofl! Parent 1 has always said her version of home education is to keep talking until they run away, and enough of it will stick! very good philosophy. I think doing it while they are trapped in bed… SB will often just say she has had enough now thankyou [always polite!]