Carnival! Rip your wig off!

It's the Carnival of Homeschooling, and my post about Zoo Tycoon is part of it. Welcome, carnival. As Penrod would say, "Pray pass out quietly and with as little jostling as possible."

I've written a post about Memorial Day which has nothing to do with remembering anything significant or meaningful, and everything to do with grilling when you live next to PETA activists. It's at my homeschooling blog on the Virginian Pilot web site.

My little boy is borrowing and carrying. It's ridiculous now how nerved up I was about introducing this, because he understands the concept of regrouping just fine. No problem. What's bizarre and mystifying is that while he can do the regrouping, he suddenly has all kinds of problems doing the arithmetic that goes with it. This is a child who can add and subtract three digit numbers in his head. I have seen him do it. But suddenly, he can't tell me what 12-8 is. It's like since we added the regrouping, he's completely lost his mind.



I have no idea what to do... he just sits there staring at the problem, and I have to say "What's 12-8 Benny? What's 12-8? Well, okay, what's 10-8? What's 10-8? What's 9-8? Okay, it's 1. So if 9-8 is 1 what's 10-8? What's 11-8? What's 12-8? Benny if I have 8 fingers and I want 12, how many do I have to add?" The only thing I can think of is to take a break from math for a while and see if it sorts itself out. He can do these complex computations in his head, but when he's looking at the page, and he's just borrowed 10 to make 12 instead of 2, he can't subtract 8 from it.

Time to go swimming. With all 12 of the fingers I wanted.

EDITED TO ADD:



And in the "Please revoke my mothering license until further notice" file, we have this: As I was sliding into the pool I remembered that at that exact moment the children were supposed to be at the pediatrician having their well check-up. Woops. They were very well in the pool.