StudyingWithKids

Channel NewsAsia featured a story about a local Singapore Secondary that started school 45 minutes later to give them more sleep. It started off as an experiment in the first semester and the teachers saw a big improvement in the students' attitudes and alertness in the morning. As a parent of a child studying in Primary school that starts at 730am, he was to wake up at 6am to prepare to take the school bus at 630am. If the school starts at 815am, he could wake up at 645am and take the bus at 715am.As he has a strict sleep time at night, that additional 45 mins would help stay more alert in school. Given that school ends much later on Tuesdays for CCA and Thursdays for extra classes, that extra 45 minutes of sleep would contribute to his well being in school. There are some on the Channel NewsAsia video post who highlighted that the change in timing will cause jams in public transport. I totally disagree on this. To be in school in 815am, the student should be already ...

Boys usually learn faster if they are hands on and can visualise the problems. As such, I usually use Legos to explain maths concept to my son so he can visualise the working and the solution. Last night, we were going through the maths homework and there was this arithmetic problem sum that required the understand of the concept of units. It only dawned upon me in the morning after how I could have used Legos to explain the concept to him, which I will be showing him later today. The Problem Sum There are three fishes. Fish A cost three times as much as Fish B. Fish C cost $4 less than Fish B. The total cost of the three fishes is $46. Find the cost of Fish A.  Step 1: Compare cost of Fish B and Fish A. Let's take the 1-whole Lego block to represent the cost of Fish B. Since Fish A cost three times as much as Fish B, the cost of Fish A cost 3 x 1-whole Lego Block. Step 2: Compare cost of Fish B and Fish C  As Fish C cost $4 less, let's the 3/4 ...

They call it the Chicken and Rabbit maths question. The question will start with the total number of chicken and rabbit, and the total number of legs. With this, you be asked how many chicken there are in the farm. The chicken and rabbit can be replace with any two and four legged animal respectively. Example of question - Hussain saw a total of 23 sheep and ducks in a farm. If there are total of 82 legs, how many ducks did he see? Many parents will look to algebra to get the answer. Eg x=sheep, y=ducks, so x+y=23 and 4x+2y=82. As this is P3 maths, you are technically not allowed to use algebra as it is not taught yet and algrebra is Mathematics and not Arithmetic. The other method is to do ratios but it can be a challenge if the numbers get too big.  I found a Youtube Video which explains how to this sum but I am blogging this to keep a record on how to this for posterity. The Explanation and The Working  There are a total of 23 animals in the farm and ...