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trickykitty) wrote2018-06-24 11:38 am
trickykitty) wrote2018-06-24 11:38 am
Entry tags:
Artistic Adventures
Little Bit and I had some minor adventures yesterday.
He had a friend over when I arrived but shortly after was ready for the friend to go home and to hopefully do something "fun and exciting" with me. It's summer, and he's easily bored, and apparently the friend had been there since noonish the previous day, so by 3pm Little Bit was getting bored with this friend and ready to do something else.
I drove the friend home and Little Bit and I performed our car wash and vacuum ritual that we've been doing most every weekend since I bought my new car*. Afterwards he was asking about getting boba tea, and I found a place on the other side of my parents' house that gave me a reason to go just two blocks further down the road to hit Half Price Books first. We stopped in HP and I perused the DVDs while Little Bit checked out the Anime section. We hit the boba place and he bought a flavor he wasn't familiar with and instantly didn't like, although I think it's the soy milk he didn't like and not the flavor, but he didn't feel comfortable going back in to the same place to order something different.
I looked up another boba place nearby, right across the street from the car wash place we had just come from on the other side of my parents' house. We went back to that area, but that place was closed for renovations. There used to be a Mooyah Burgers & Fries next door to it, but it's now becoming some sort of Asian restaurant that sounds like I will definitely have to try out once they're open (I forget the name and Google Maps hasn't been updated yet), and I think that's the bulk of the renovations that are going on in there.
Little Bit was pretty despondent, so I again looked for another boba place, which again was on the other side of my parents' house down the road into Bedford, so again we drove back down Harwood, past the first boba place, past the Half Price Books, and a couple stop lights further up the road. As I pulled into that shopping center I happened to see a popcorn place a couple of suites down from the boba place, and I thought it would be nice to get some flavored popcorn to take back to my mom. I pulled up to that shop, but sadly, that place was already closed for the day. Next door to them, though, was an art place, and Little Bit noticed they had "Art Classes" stenciled on their front window and I noticed that they were open. He showed a little interest, and after parking the vehicle in front of the boba place, I asked him if he wanted to check it out before we went to get the boba. Sure, he said. We walked back to their suite and went in.
Oh Boy! Central Arts of Bedford is all about having a comfortable space for people to make mostly paintings, but all sorts of other artistic pieces as well. One ~4ft tall piece was a 1ft x 3ft hunk of teal glass mounted in a handcrafted metal frame that had skulls blown into it from the back side - it was done by a dentist whose office was just up the road. We happened to stop by while there was just one person in the place and prior to a regular bi-weekly showing that they were doing between 7-11pm, so the studio was set up like a gallery at the moment. Little Bit got more and more excited about taking classes there, which are more about bringing out someone's innate creativity than forcing someone to work on a subject or in a medium that they are not enthusiastic about all for the sake of teaching technique over interest.
We picked up the boba, grabbed a frozen smoothie for mom, and headed back to the house. We picked her up and made her come back with us to the art place so she could see it for herself. Little Bit kept asking me why we were bringing her, as I think he was wanting to keep this as a just-between-us adventure, and I told him we wanted her to be as excited about this place as he was, since she'd be the one most likely bringing him to his classes and/or paying for them. It's also my secret to try to get mom out of the house a bit more when I can. Her hip and back pains make it difficult for her to get out of chairs, let alone out of the house. We headed back to the house to contemplate dinner. It was a toss up between our favorite Chan's Mongolian Grill (next to the car wash and the 2nd boba tea place), Moon Wok (which we haven't tried yet and is in the same shopping center as the Half Price Books), or the new Burning Rice (which is next to my bank up the road a bit from Chan's). The fact that all these places exist within a 5 mile radius of my parents' house does still make it an easy drive when traversing back and fourth along the same road a few times in one day.
We decided to try out Burning Rice, which is a bibimbop (sic) restaurant, and was pretty good. Little Bit got despondent again, though, because while we were at the house thinking about what to get he happened to go looking up Korean BBQ and saw the places where you can grill your own meat, so he was looking forward to that. Unfortunately, Burning Rice is not that type of restaurant. I'll have to take the boys either into Arlington or back into Carrollton to try out one of the in-table grill restaurants. I've had Jin Korean in south Arlington, but there's also Omi Korean with locations in north Arlington and Carrollton, and there's also Gen Korean (note the spelling difference) also in Carrollton, in the same shopping center as the revolving sushi that the boys are always begging to go back to.
I have created little food monsters!
We had our dinner, mom and I plopped down for a couple episodes of Big Bang Theory while our stomachs settled, and Little Bit ran off to his room. Dad was already asleep, and Eldest was still hanging out with his Gaggle of Boys friends for the second day in a row. Mom lamented that she's going to be sad when the day comes that he spends all his time with his friends and is never home. Little Bit, however, will probably keep her active enough with his summer musings, between a math tutoring class (that he asked for himself), possible drum lessons, and now art lessons.
I found out that schools have been teaching multiplication in a very strange way, which I just looked up and is called Two Digit Multiplication versus how I was taught which is called Vertical Multiplication, and it's confusing as fuck, and I can't for the life of me see how this new method is somehow winning over from the older, more compact and seemingly faster method. Also, that video says students won't have to use pen and paper to solve complex multiplications now and implies us old farts never faced real-world word problems when learning to do math. BULLSHIT! There's no way even I'm doing that stupid ass quadrant of smaller multiplications in my head and keeping those numbers in my head long enough to then turn around and add them up. I think I'd be better off making lines in order to never have to know how to multiply ever again. So, after being tested at Kumon, the tutors are recommending reprogramming that "new math" out of Little Bit's head and getting him into using the "old math" ways. Oh, and there's the Big-7 division and Multiple Towers, or some other such bull, in order to do the long division, which again the video implies won't require pen and paper to ever work out again. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Good fucking grief, this shit hurts my head. Why are we teaching this crap to the kids?
*Also, I bought a new car, which I hadn't posted about. Not much to say about it other than there's a new fancy gadget in our driveway. The Acura is now a family spare vehicle and will most likely become Eldest's car of choice when he gets his driver license in a couple months. He turns 16 in July, but he waited too long to start his driver's education class, and he's required to have a permit for at least 6 months as a requirement to getting his license, so he'll have to wait a couple extra months before he's official. That must be a change since 20+ years ago, because I took my driver's ed class in spring, then turned 16 on June 29, so I only had my permit for about a month before I had my official DL. (And I just realized my birthday is only 5 days away, sheesh where the hell did April and May and June go?)
He had a friend over when I arrived but shortly after was ready for the friend to go home and to hopefully do something "fun and exciting" with me. It's summer, and he's easily bored, and apparently the friend had been there since noonish the previous day, so by 3pm Little Bit was getting bored with this friend and ready to do something else.
I drove the friend home and Little Bit and I performed our car wash and vacuum ritual that we've been doing most every weekend since I bought my new car*. Afterwards he was asking about getting boba tea, and I found a place on the other side of my parents' house that gave me a reason to go just two blocks further down the road to hit Half Price Books first. We stopped in HP and I perused the DVDs while Little Bit checked out the Anime section. We hit the boba place and he bought a flavor he wasn't familiar with and instantly didn't like, although I think it's the soy milk he didn't like and not the flavor, but he didn't feel comfortable going back in to the same place to order something different.
I looked up another boba place nearby, right across the street from the car wash place we had just come from on the other side of my parents' house. We went back to that area, but that place was closed for renovations. There used to be a Mooyah Burgers & Fries next door to it, but it's now becoming some sort of Asian restaurant that sounds like I will definitely have to try out once they're open (I forget the name and Google Maps hasn't been updated yet), and I think that's the bulk of the renovations that are going on in there.
Little Bit was pretty despondent, so I again looked for another boba place, which again was on the other side of my parents' house down the road into Bedford, so again we drove back down Harwood, past the first boba place, past the Half Price Books, and a couple stop lights further up the road. As I pulled into that shopping center I happened to see a popcorn place a couple of suites down from the boba place, and I thought it would be nice to get some flavored popcorn to take back to my mom. I pulled up to that shop, but sadly, that place was already closed for the day. Next door to them, though, was an art place, and Little Bit noticed they had "Art Classes" stenciled on their front window and I noticed that they were open. He showed a little interest, and after parking the vehicle in front of the boba place, I asked him if he wanted to check it out before we went to get the boba. Sure, he said. We walked back to their suite and went in.
Oh Boy! Central Arts of Bedford is all about having a comfortable space for people to make mostly paintings, but all sorts of other artistic pieces as well. One ~4ft tall piece was a 1ft x 3ft hunk of teal glass mounted in a handcrafted metal frame that had skulls blown into it from the back side - it was done by a dentist whose office was just up the road. We happened to stop by while there was just one person in the place and prior to a regular bi-weekly showing that they were doing between 7-11pm, so the studio was set up like a gallery at the moment. Little Bit got more and more excited about taking classes there, which are more about bringing out someone's innate creativity than forcing someone to work on a subject or in a medium that they are not enthusiastic about all for the sake of teaching technique over interest.
We picked up the boba, grabbed a frozen smoothie for mom, and headed back to the house. We picked her up and made her come back with us to the art place so she could see it for herself. Little Bit kept asking me why we were bringing her, as I think he was wanting to keep this as a just-between-us adventure, and I told him we wanted her to be as excited about this place as he was, since she'd be the one most likely bringing him to his classes and/or paying for them. It's also my secret to try to get mom out of the house a bit more when I can. Her hip and back pains make it difficult for her to get out of chairs, let alone out of the house. We headed back to the house to contemplate dinner. It was a toss up between our favorite Chan's Mongolian Grill (next to the car wash and the 2nd boba tea place), Moon Wok (which we haven't tried yet and is in the same shopping center as the Half Price Books), or the new Burning Rice (which is next to my bank up the road a bit from Chan's). The fact that all these places exist within a 5 mile radius of my parents' house does still make it an easy drive when traversing back and fourth along the same road a few times in one day.
We decided to try out Burning Rice, which is a bibimbop (sic) restaurant, and was pretty good. Little Bit got despondent again, though, because while we were at the house thinking about what to get he happened to go looking up Korean BBQ and saw the places where you can grill your own meat, so he was looking forward to that. Unfortunately, Burning Rice is not that type of restaurant. I'll have to take the boys either into Arlington or back into Carrollton to try out one of the in-table grill restaurants. I've had Jin Korean in south Arlington, but there's also Omi Korean with locations in north Arlington and Carrollton, and there's also Gen Korean (note the spelling difference) also in Carrollton, in the same shopping center as the revolving sushi that the boys are always begging to go back to.
I have created little food monsters!
We had our dinner, mom and I plopped down for a couple episodes of Big Bang Theory while our stomachs settled, and Little Bit ran off to his room. Dad was already asleep, and Eldest was still hanging out with his Gaggle of Boys friends for the second day in a row. Mom lamented that she's going to be sad when the day comes that he spends all his time with his friends and is never home. Little Bit, however, will probably keep her active enough with his summer musings, between a math tutoring class (that he asked for himself), possible drum lessons, and now art lessons.
I found out that schools have been teaching multiplication in a very strange way, which I just looked up and is called Two Digit Multiplication versus how I was taught which is called Vertical Multiplication, and it's confusing as fuck, and I can't for the life of me see how this new method is somehow winning over from the older, more compact and seemingly faster method. Also, that video says students won't have to use pen and paper to solve complex multiplications now and implies us old farts never faced real-world word problems when learning to do math. BULLSHIT! There's no way even I'm doing that stupid ass quadrant of smaller multiplications in my head and keeping those numbers in my head long enough to then turn around and add them up. I think I'd be better off making lines in order to never have to know how to multiply ever again. So, after being tested at Kumon, the tutors are recommending reprogramming that "new math" out of Little Bit's head and getting him into using the "old math" ways. Oh, and there's the Big-7 division and Multiple Towers, or some other such bull, in order to do the long division, which again the video implies won't require pen and paper to ever work out again. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Good fucking grief, this shit hurts my head. Why are we teaching this crap to the kids?
*Also, I bought a new car, which I hadn't posted about. Not much to say about it other than there's a new fancy gadget in our driveway. The Acura is now a family spare vehicle and will most likely become Eldest's car of choice when he gets his driver license in a couple months. He turns 16 in July, but he waited too long to start his driver's education class, and he's required to have a permit for at least 6 months as a requirement to getting his license, so he'll have to wait a couple extra months before he's official. That must be a change since 20+ years ago, because I took my driver's ed class in spring, then turned 16 on June 29, so I only had my permit for about a month before I had my official DL. (And I just realized my birthday is only 5 days away, sheesh where the hell did April and May and June go?)
no subject
The goal in teaching different methods of multiplication (or addition, or subtraction) is to engage the students in thinking about why the methods work rather than simply memorizing algorithms, plugging in numbers, spitting out answers. Rote memorization without understanding... well, it works really well for a few years, and then kids hit a wall, usually either in the 4th grade or, if they have good memories and pattern recognition skills, around pre-algebra. There's just too much to remember, and it's too complicated. Conceptual understanding takes longer, but it's better.
I've spent a lot of time over the past 10 years talking to people on this issue. This may surprise you to hear, but a lot of people don't know why the algorithms they memorized work. They don't understand that 18 x 22 is the same as 18 x 20 + 18 x 2... even though they do that on paper every time they multiply! And consequently they also don't understand that it's the same as 20 x 22 - 2 x 22, or 9 x 11 x 4, or... well, I could go on. The point is, they don't really grasp what they're doing. They just memorized the steps, and they want their kids to memorize the steps. If these people make errors in their calculations, they often can't identify and fix the errors either.
It's the same with partial quotients division (which your video calls "big 7"). First, the video is quite correct, that algorithm is more optimized for mental math than the long division algorithm you're familiar with - and it's really quite easy once you're used to it. It hurts your head now only because you're unfamiliar with it. I know many people - and this time not just people with learning disabilites! - who prefer to use it the majority of the time, though, again, every state requires the teaching of the standard long division algorithm. (Which is good, as it's a necessary precursor for learning to extract square roots.) The partial quotients algorithm makes it clear what you're doing when you divide and why it works. Again, this may seem shocking, but I have met adults who didn't understand that when you divide 3 into 369 what you're really doing is dividing it first into 300, then into 60, then into 9 and adding those results together. If they made an error in their calculations they couldn't find and fix it, because they didn't understand it. And the long division algorithm is complicated! Memorization without understanding means you're more likely to make mistakes.
I think I'd be better off making lines in order to never have to know how to multiply ever again.
Again, you've got it backwards. We don't teach children to make arrays so they "never have to know how to multiply". We do it so they do know how to multiply. You can teach a crow to recite "two times two is four, two times three is six", but they won't understand it. Simply memorizing algorithms isn't understanding. Drawing an array makes the relationship between the symbols and the action explicit. Of course 3 x 4 = 12, because if you make three rows of four dots each, hey, you get twelve dots. You can think of this as training wheels. When your child first learned to ride a bike, you let him have training wheels. And then when he got experienced, he didn't need them. Well, arrays, and partial quotients, and the lattice method - these are training wheels for understanding. Once you understand, then you don't need to spend as much mental resources on memorization, which frees you up to do more complex arithmetic later.
It's like... it's like the difference between phonics and the old look-say method. A four year old can memorize the appearance of hundreds of words in a fairly rapid time and read any number of books with those words in them... but once they encounter unfamiliar words, they're stuck, and sooner or later they won't be able to memorize any new words. Or you can spend 100 hours laboriously teaching the 74 basic phonograms used in English. That takes longer. They won't be "reading" books in their first week, or even their first month. But once you've done it, they don't need to memorize any more random word shapes and can decode just about any English-language text that comes their way. For decades, America has been doing look-say math - memorize the algorithms, don't ask why. And it is crippling. This is the reason there are adults who go "I don't really understand fractions" or who don't comprehend why 12 x 3 must be the same number as 6 x 6 and 9 x 4 (a little more work with arrays would've fixed that up) or who can't see why 4 must go into 368 the same number of times that 2 goes into 184. They're stuck on arithmetic when they are all of them capable of at least handling statistics, basic algebra, and geometry. And why? Because at some point, somebody told them that they should just memorize the algorithms and not worry about why they worked.
no subject
I had the same problem in AP Calculus in my senior year. The teacher would introduce a new integral solving method, and my co-conspirator classmate and I would absorb it like a sponge and be able to instantly apply it to all the new problems given to us. We'd race each other when she wrote a new problem on the board, solving it in our heads and seeing who got the answer first. Then we would work on other class homework while some other students in class would spend the next week still trying to understand the new solving method.
I had a hard time not understanding why other kids in the same exact class as me didn't understand it like I did. I guess I take that ability for granted without realizing it.
no subject
It's the sort of thing that makes teaching hard, too.
Multiple approaches, coupled with plenty of practice, really does work better for more students in the long run, though. We really want to force them to think about what they're doing, and they won't do that if they can just coast along by memorizing patterns.
(Note: However, if your kid is doing Everyday Math - which it sounds like from the emphasis on lattice multiplication! - that curriculum works well when the teacher knows the material backwards and forwards and the class spends a couple of hours a day on it. Neither of these things is guaranteed in real life, so.... If you have the whole of summer opening up in front of you and don't mind doing a couple hours of school a day, I recommend either Singapore Math if you're willing to follow the home instructor's guide and not just plow through the workbooks, and Math Mammoth if you're not.)