Kumon and Cooking.

This is actually for yesterday. I tried sending my pics from the phone to the computer but it wouldn't work. My hardware and software seem to be feeling much better today so I can get on with it now.

So. When the kids came in from school they had their usual snack to keep the wolf from the door and gor straight on with their Kumon homework. This has to be done religiously every day. It's a kind of brain training, a method based upon repetition and gradual progress through the stages. Earlier that day I rang the instructor to discuss the process for Honor's maths. At the moment she is practising daily subtraction of 2-digit numbers and I had been telling her to mark on the paper where she was carrying from the 10's. But the instructor insists that the pupil must not write it down but hold the process mentally in their heads as they go through it. In the workbook a whole page is devoted to subtracting from numbers that end in 3 so that the pupil is also revising number bonds to 13 at the same time. Eg, 43-15= the 3 becomes 13 in your head, 8 and 5 is 13 so the unit is 8 and then you have to remember that the 4 is now 3, subtract the 1 = 2 and the answer is 28. I thought Honor might struggle with not being allowed to write the process down but she didn't. She has done quite a bit of practise on this already so she is getting quicker and more mentally agile (faster than me, in fact, though as I said to the instructor, I don't think I'll be getting Alzheimer's any time soon!). Honor is also enjoying the English work. I know she has only just started but she has actually been taking alot of care in completing it accurately. There seems to be a lot of focus, not just in Kumon but in school also to form letters 'just so.' For example 'k' and 'h' have tall sticks (ascenders) right up to the line but 't's ascender doesn't quite reach it and teachers are VERY fussy about it being right! (much more so than I used to be!...as long as I could read it, that was good enough!) Henry has been doing Kumon maths since March. I wanted him to start at the beginning because I believe the school curriculum lacks the basic repetitive practise that I think is essential. At the stage he is at now he can easily read, write and count numbers up to 100. I'm not going to put him in English yet (1. Can't really afford it and 2. think it'll be too much to do after school) but he is reading very well, flying through the books he brings home from school and I did buy a couple of Kumon English books from Amazon so I can photocopy just a page or 2 at a time for extra help at home, when he is up to it.

After Kumon, they did their cooking as Wednesday is cooking day! Honor was given a recipe from CBeebies I Can Cook for a bread and butter pudding to follow by herself. This was a good opportunity for her to practise weighing and measuring. Henry made fruit buns. They both used up the over-ripe bananas from the fruit bowl in their recipes.