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How many times have I heard ‘When am I EVER going to use this?’ as my kids struggle through a homework assignment? Plenty! That’s why, whenever we think about it, we offer up practical ways to use what they learn.
That last sentence sounded really good didn’t it? Who am I kidding? I needed to recover some pillows and I stink at math so I decided that I would enlist the help of my lovelies instead of slogging through to an answer my self. Yup. Truth.
The problem: I needed to recover four pillows that have a diameter of 28inches. The fabric I was ordering was 54 inches wide. How many yards did I need to order?
I love how everybody approached the problem differently. Kate was really enthusiastic at first but when I explained the specifics she realized that she was actually going to be learning that stuff the very next day in math. (What are the chances?!?) Ellie, our resident math genius, was not interested in working on this at all so she ignored us. Jill decided that if she was going to this at all she would make it as complicated as possible. (Not her words, just my observation.) There were a lot of variables that made it look like alphabet soup.
When Mr. Fun chimed in with all sorts of wild estimations Ellie could not help herself so she jumped into the project and teamed up with Jill to prove him wrong. I’m not sure if he was serious when he estimate that I would need 6.5 yards or if he just wanted to keep the girls interested in the project.
We made some patterns for the circle pillows (the old pencil/yarn compass trick) and then laid them out so we had a visual. Then the girls got down to the math.
In the end it was the uninterested genius that figured it out with lots of consultation with her variable loving overachieving smarty sister. They smugly figured that 4.5 years was the amount of fabric I was to order. I ordered five yards to be safe, but sure enough I only needed 4.5.
Mr. Fun was happy because their answer saved us $20 since it was two yards less than his wild estimation. I was happy because I didn’t have to figure it out myself. (And, okay, we were both secretly happy because we’d figured out a way for them to use their math skills in the real world. Woot!)