Learning Math Concepts

My nine year old daughter wants to be an astronaut and she's passionate about astronomy and space. I've learned more about the solar system from her, and because of her, than I ever did in school.

A few months ago, she and my husband (I call them the two space cadets-lol) were watching Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks and there's a scene where they were using math concepts to figure out how to bring the capsule back to Earth. Jacqueline asked Billy to pause the movie at a scene that showed the paper they were writing on so she could get a look at it. She wanted to know what they were doing and what type of math that was.

This started an ongoing discussion about algebra and calculus and since then she's been asking Billy to explain it to her. He told her that he would look around for a book because he needed to brush up on it himself.

That was a couple of months ago and because of other issues going on in our life, he hadn't gotten around to buying the book yet.

Taking matters into her own hands, (my mother always said-when there's a will, there's a way) Jacqueline spotted an algebra text book in a used book store and bought it with her own money.

The other night she asked Billy to read her a bedtime story and when he walked into her room, there she was...all cozy in bed with Sally, the bear she created at Build-A-Bear. She handed Billy the book she had selected...the algebra textbook. She also had a notebook so she could jot down notes.

I couldn't resist a picture. :-)



Have I mentioned how much I love unschooling recently? :-)