It's Another School Year's Journey

“Joe is 7 years younger than twice Maria’s age. Joe is 15. How old is Maria?”

— Dumb Math Problems

The Purpose of Math

Remember when you were in school and you were learning something that didn't make sense and you wanted to know when you were going to use it in real life? The answer is when your kids have it for homework. 

***

The Hustler

For the majority of the school year, I'd been making Christopher smoothies for breakfast. 

Keeping up with a grocery list of smoothie ingredients and then making one each morning, five days a week is something to whine about. 

After several mornings of Christopher not finishing his smoothie and running to or missing the bus, I told him that he needed to do better with being ready in time for the bus. "You're wasting the smoothie."

"You need to hustle, son."

His response was, "Well, I just won't have a smoothie anymore on a school day."

Like he had to make it. 🙄

I didn't argue that sipping a smoothie could be multi-tasked with getting dressed. I was tired of making them so I just said, "Okay."

We had silent treatment for the next few mornings before one day when he asked, "Do you think I could have biscuits for breakfast?" I said yes, and as I had to get up 15 minutes earlier to pre-heat the oven, I thought to myself, I got hustled. 

***

Do all parents do this?

So Christopher came home from school and said to me, "Mom, did you get a call from the school today?"

Me: 👀 No? 👀

Christopher: You probably will.

Me: .... Did he get in trouble? Was there a fight? Bomb threat? Something happened on the bus?

Me: WHAT HAPPENED!?!

Christopher: The power went out during the EOG’s and now the makeup day is Friday.

Me: 😳🙄 ok - exhaaaale

It's the end of the school year,and I'm glad about it.

***

So kids these days don't seem to use scratch paper. They just look at their laptops and process a word problem in their heads.

Can you do that and tell me how old Maria is?

This was a Finish the Sentence Friday share. It's the standard prompt for Week 1 of the Finish the Sentence Friday writing community. I'm co-hosting with Kristi Campbell of Finding Ninee and this week we are finishing the sentence, "It's the end of the school year, and..."