Math

As a reminder, we're using Math Smart Junior from the "Smart Jr." series published by the Princeton Review for our math this year along with other projects and books from the Living Math reading list. It's been a huge hit, and C has surprised me with what she's picked up. Math has always been a strong subject for her yet a difficult subject for me, so I was worried when we first made the decision to switch approaches this fall. I still credit her strong start to using Singapore Math books from the beginning. Perhaps the reason that I'm so impressed with how well this series is working for us simply because I never would have picked up the subject like she is at this age.

Today's shock and awe... we learned about permutations and combinations. She picked it up literally from the get go and had the section finished in ten minutes. This was her final word problem in the exercise:

Sondra is performing in a gymnastics competition, and she has to choose 3 moves from a group of 10 possible moves to arrange her opening sequence. None of the moves can be repeated. How many opening sequences are possible if she is choosing only from this group?

C did it in her head, and got it right, all in about 45 seconds.

The next to last problem: Jennifer and Taylor are packing their ration box for a camping trip. There are 2 kinds of fruit, 3 kinds of bread, 2 kinds of cheese to choose from, and they must only choose 1 of each. How many possible menus are there for the ration box?

As soon as I finished reading the problem she looked at me and without missing a beat said, "12." She was right. I would have had to at least stopped and worked the problem. I don't brag often, but this one got me thrilled and wanting to run into someone who would ask me how I knew homeschooling would work.

We finish the chapter with a review quiz tomorrow and then will move into a project of some sort next week (need to check the various game/project books that I have) on Probability and Averages. My problem is that quite a few that I've found seem to be focused on gambling, and I'm not too keen on giving my 9 yo a project of that nature. Here's hoping the Scholastic books have a different take. ;)

Next week we move into a unit on Graphs and Charts. She's very excited. It's almost as exciting as negative numbers to her.