Day 249

This morning was my first morning back at school working in the library after the summer holidays. I loved it as always, there is something about the kids faces that just touches me. So cute!
I saw Robert's maths teacher, who seemed almost as proud as me about Robert's perfect mark, so that was nice. She told me she wanted to keep Robert on in the extra maths lesson as they were now doing numbers over 20 and that it might get complicated for Robert with the Germans and English reading the numbers differently. The English say "twenty eight" but the Germans say "eight and twenty". Little did I know at that time, that I was going to find out all about that in the afternoon!

Yep we had another homework meltdown in the afternoon. He did his homework with no problem, I was in the lounge and he did all of it on his own in the kitchen, when he had finished I asked him to bring it to me so I could just check it all, mainly to just make sure he had done ALL of it. Well, poor thing, when he showed it to me, he had half of his maths homework completely wrong, and all because of the different way of saying the numbers. Poor thing had got himself totally confused half way through the homework. It started out Ok, and then went all wrong. So I told him I would rub it all out and he would have to do it again, and then I started to explain it to him. He was so put out that I had rubbed it all out, that he just turned his back on me and ignored me. I can take that and try and explain it all nicely for a little while, but after 5minutes of a stubborn back, I sat him in the kitchen on his own and told him to get on with it, if he thought he didn't need it explained. At some point he decided, I wasn't backing down and he did it, but he got it all wrong again, and I rubbed it out again. I think he was sat over this little bit of homework for a good 2 hours in all. He even sat over it, whilst my pupil was there for more English tuition. She got a bit extra today too, cause she now knows how to get cross in English!
In the end I decided that we were getting no where with the homework and my pupil nowhere with her revision so I sent Robert to play. And after we had got Richard he got to sit down and try again. I thought a break, might give him an "AHA" moment, but it didn't. BUT he did let me try and explain it all to him this time, and when I then left the room he did actually get it right. Not sure whether it was my explanation or if he had just given up being stubborn! For tomorrow I have found some more practise sheets for him to do, and hopefully this won't be a problem for long.
Here he is, when he finally "got it" and here is Richard writing down his own sums to work out. He has worked out, that you can use your fingers for adding and was doing his own maths lesson here! Too cute!

Richard was also cute, when he was washing his hands today, this is the conversation I had with him. "Mummy, I know why we use soap and water to wash our hands. The water washes away the dirt and the soap washes away the germs. And we have to move our hands when we put on the soap, because that way we can get rid of more germs. Cause germs aren't good and we want to get rid of them", "That's right, darling, who told you all about that then?" (that's me thinking he might have learnt about it at Kindergarden today) "I just know these things, Mummy!" Soooo cute!
He is like a little sponge, and just soaks up any information :o)

CU tomorrow