Jonah's example of an animal hibernating

Jonah’s example of an animal hibernating

Lately, Jonah has been obsessed with using my computer to play online math games. These “games” are more like digital workbooks, and the kid cannot get enough. (Nerd alert). The games start at Kindergarten and go up to 8th grade. When Jonah found out that there was Geometry and Algebra and a chance to do 3rd, 4th, or even 5th grade math, he begged me to let him do it. I’m happy to support the curiosity over what “big kids” in 1st and 2nd grade are doing– as long as he can do most of it on his own. You can’t learn anything if I’m doing all the button pushing!

The problem (and by now you might be wondering why I consider this a problem) is that 1) He wants to do this all the time (and I need my computer) and 2) He is desperate to do the Geometry and even advanced Algebra problems. But guess what? This mommy is NOT smarter than a 5th grader! I have NO idea how to do half of these problems. My poor kid wants to “play math” and I have zero ability to “play” back.

Before you go wondering just how math illiterate I am, let me make it clear: Very. I’m very math illiterate so we can all just stop wondering. If you really must know, I had to take calculus trig or whatever it’s called twice. In fact, in high school I missed senior beach day because I was stuck taking the finals that I failed junior year. (It was fine anyway because the night before I had a terrible reaction to Jolene, so it would have been a disaster anyway, but come on!)

Oh, how lucky am I that New York University looked past my mathematically challenged brain and instead embraced a young aspiring actress who would one day turn out to be a mom blogger…

But I digress….

I’d like to think I give Jonah great, straight forward but thoughtful explanations about how things work and why so and so is happening… But there are some things that I just cannot do, cannot explain and cannot answer.

As I’m cleaning up dinner:

J: Mom, what’s the name of the animal who hibernates and then comes out and likes to see it’s own shadow?

Me: Huh? What? I don’t know.

J: You don’t know?! Come on, Mom, you should know this. You’re thirty-something.

Thank goodness for Siri and her groundhog finding facts. Cheers.

FILED UNDER: A Little Life
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