Geeking Out

First, I am overwhelmed by the response to my previous post on homeschooling. I value your support more than I can express, and wish I could respond to all your wonderful comments. Because of you, I am feeling much more confident and, well, happy about our decisions. My searches, fueled by your help, have found there isn't nearly the dearth of secular philosophy and curricula out there as my first investigations suggested. Someday I'll find some time to check out blogs and other links given to me to expand my homeschooling bloglist.

So, now I'm freer to dream and scheme about lessons and discoveries.

Since my mind is racing with ideas on how to better teach my kids arithmetic so that someday my retirement will be secure when one or all find the secret to cold fusion, I developed a simple matrix that shows addition and subtraction tables to ten, and multiplication and division to fifteen. I figure estimation will come easier if they can see how numbers work together better than just memorizing tables.

In the monotonous typing exercise of creating these tables, I realized I never gave division its full due. There are some really interesting patterns to be found when dividing a number by nine, or how numbers divisible by three have a dependable pattern of .333 or .156 to follow. Sure, all (ok, some?) of those computer geeks are all over binary code, but threes are pretty darned cool if you ask me. Now that I see it, that is.

Enjoy this little trip into arithmetic geekdom.



Here's the file should anyone want it to print out for your own use.