Making Math Fun = Epic Fail

I was going to try and keep my posts this week along the blog party lines (if you are visiting for the first time from Lynnette's blog, scroll down to see my first two party posts). But this is too special not to blog about. Can you feel the sarcasm dripping...no, pouring...from that sentence????

On Sunday afternoons I sit down and do school planning for the week. This past Sunday as I was doing the planning I thought to my most awesome homeschool Mom self, "Hey! I'll change things up a bit for Math this week for the girls!! They'll love the change of pace!! They'll love the cool designs!"

Back up a few months ago when Scholastic had a $1 sale. I snagged some (what I thought were) fun books to supplement our schooling. Twelve to be exact. Two of those were:

Math Skills Made Fun: Kaleidoscope Math (see...even in the full title it says, "Math Skills Made Fun"!!!!)

Math Skills Made Fun: Dazzling Math Line Designs (again with the "....Made Fun" in the title!)

I picked pages that were review for each of the girls. Nothing new. Nothing horribly challenging. Just review and the fun of seeing the cool designs after finding the answers.

I thought, "My creative girls will love the change of pace. They will love seeing the cool designs!!...blah blah blah" I was feeling pretty good about myself and how creative I was being and how much they would appreciate not having to do the mundane book lesson!!! You know that scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie is daydreaming about how one day after getting the Red Rider BB gun he would save his family from robbers and how they would shower him with praises?? Yes...that was going to be me. But the homeschool mom version with adoring children falling all over me with gratitude of not having to sit through a routine math lesson. And then begging me to do more tomorrow and next week!!!

Today each of the girls had a paper to do. The 3rd grader figured out her task. The 7th grader had one question and then took off. The 5th grader.....well....it went something like this.

Her paper was titled "Puffy Cloud". Dots with fractions next to them. The directions were simple: Convert the fraction to a decimal (and just go to the thousandths place). If the quotient was between .01 and .50, a compass was to be placed on the dot next to the fraction (the directions showed exactly how far open to set the compass) and a lovely circle was made. The end result: a "puffy cloud" of circles similar to a Spirograph (ah..the Spirograph...they just don't make toys like that anymore!) design.

She didn't understand. I helped her with a couple and went over what to do when she had the answer. Then she went to sit down and go about finishing the paper.

About ten minutes later I looked over and she was staring at the paper. When she noticed I was looking said, "I don't get it." To which I replied, "Have you been sitting there all this time NOT doing anything?" To which she replied, "Yeah, I guess so. I don't get what I'm supposed to do."

Then I just sat there staring at the table for what felt like an eternity as I realized that there would be none of the falling over me with gratitude for making math fun.

One more time we went over the directions. I did several of the conversions with her. Then she finally took off on her own. Instead of excitement and gratitude, I heard:

"This is boring."

The 7th grader looking over at what she was doing, "Yeah....it looks boring."

After the page was done (with a pretty cool design I must say!!!) and she was putting it away, "That doesn't look like a cloud."

Epic FAIL.