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Cassius’ wonderful learning consultant forwarded us this message from another Self Design Parent:
“Murderous Maths – we have them all, and my son LOVES them. He does not understand all the concepts as they are quite sophisticated, but he enjoys reading the cartoons and jokes and he is getting the basic ideas behind the concepts as a result. When I purchased these, it was mainly for my own interest and I did not expect my 7-year-old would look at them, let alone walk around for days on end giggling whilst reading them. But he has – and I feel that some huge step has been taken for making Math fun and interesting and not about worksheets, or “boring sums” as per the back of each book (i.e. no boring sums are in these books).
The actual math in each book is clearly explained on this site: http://www.murderousmaths.co.uk/. You’ll need to scroll a little. You’ll see why this is not Math for a 7-year-old – but he is getting the idea.
For some bizarre reason, these books are only published and distributed in the U.K. You can get them through Fun Books in the states.”
Since Cassius loves the horrible histories and I know he learns through humour I thought we’d try them out. They are wonderful! I’ve been up to midnight every night this week because I can’t put them down. Cassius has been reading all the cartoons and we’re half way through reading the first book together.
We actually can’t stop ourselves from working out the problems. In the first book Colonel Cancel needs to buy back his men’s clothes from Thag the Mathemagician. He has 13 pieces of clothes buy back. He can either pay a penny for the first and and double the amount for each following item (1 cent , then 2 cents, then 4 cents and so on), or he can pay one dollar for the first and one dollar more per item ($1 , then $2, then $3 etc.). Which way do you think would be the smartest way to pay?
These books aren’t just funny, they are intelligent. They really make math seem interesting and amazing. If Cassius reads all these books he’ll know more than I ever learned in school about math, even if he never does one boring sum.
Cassius’ Self Design Learning Consultant ask me to write down everything Cassius learnt in one week by playing with Bionicle. This is what I came up with. I’m sure I missed something!
This winter we have learned a lot from things that haven’t worked out. Cassius and I took a beginner photography class together which I highly recommend for those interested in photography. The class was taught by Liisa Hannus, a local homeschooling mom at her studio delirium darkroom. Cassius was a bit younger than the recommended age for this class , but since he was so interested (and I insisted he was a genius and wouldn’t have any trouble!) she said he could give it a try.
After a few classes and some tears we realized it was far to technical for him. Cassius is interested in the artistic side of photography, but not ready for all the technical parts – which are hard for lots of adults to understand. Liisa recommended getting him a point and shoot ( he was using an old SLR) and letting him take lots of pictures just for fun.
I finished off the class with three ten year old boys, and now have a much better idea what all those dials and numbers on my camera are for. Liisa added a class onto the end that she thought Cassius would enjoy: photograms. Cassius and I had fun creating the pictures and developing them in the darkroom together.
This Spring Break Cassius attended knight camp again for the second time and was promoted from a Squire to a Man at Arms. This time round there were twice as many students. Cassius really noticed that he had to wait around a lot more than last summer. He had a new appreciation for small class sizes by the end of the week.
He did get some one on one teaching which he really enjoyed. At the week end presentation the director said that Cassius only had to be shown how to do something once and he did right the first time.
