Tweendom approaches

Spent 20 minutes today arguing with CJ over which is better, the Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” or Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Good Time” (feat. Owl City.)  Caleb favors Jepsen, arguing that songs are made of “music, singing, and words,” and that “I Gotta Feeling” wins on words but loses on music and singing.  His judgment of “I Gotta Feeling” as a piece of music is that “the music doesn’t match the singing and 3/4 of the music is copied and the 1/4 of the music that isn’t copied is boring.”

I asked CJ what “Good Time” is about and he said “it’s about people who overestimate their life and think bad things never happen in it.”

 

7 Apr 2013: Twins 4, Orioles 3

I took CJ to this game, his first at OPACY.  Great day out, perfect weather, but a terrible game, which both teams seemed to be trying their best to lose.  Joe Mauer dropped a foul popup.  Alexi Casilla made the last out for the Orioles on a weak grounder — but the pitcher bobbled it, and Casilla probably would have made first on the play if he hadn’t jogged half-heartedly out of the batter’s box.  And of course there was Adam Jones, who pulled up on a fly that was his to catch and let it drop three feet in front of him for a two-run double — yes, it was ruled a double, in an act of generosity so extravagant that the official scorer could have legally taken it off his taxes.  A week later, Jones would drop a fly ball against the Yankees to allow three runs to score in a 5-2 New York victory.  Jones looks like a really good center fielder, but the defensive metrics hate him, and I have to say the defensive metrics have the better of it at the moment.

Jason Hammel, in theory our ace, looked a lot worse than his line suggests; behind in the count all day, never seeming to find much of a rhythm.

So the Orioles, on the strength of this game, didn’t look like a good ballclub — but for the season as a whole, they’re holding their own against the powers of the AL East, and one can’t ask for much more than that.

After the game, CJ and I walked around the Inner Harbor, which has not changed at all since I was a kid, and seems to be just as crowded as popular and kid-pleasing as it ever has been.  OK, one change:  the Power Plant, which used to be a metal-oriented rock club, is now a Barnes and Noble.  Sort of strange, since metal is more popular and than it was when I was a kid, and books less so.  But Baltimore marches to its own beat.

Final note to self:  remember that, even in Baltimore, a crabcake is not the kind of food that’s likely to be good at the ballpark.

Imagery

Singapore Math

CJ’s school is using it — this already comes as a surprise, since I have heard of it only in the context of “I hate my school’s discovery-based math curriculum and I’m supplementing with Singapore Math” and didn’t know it was actually used in schools.

The second surprise, given that context, is that Singapore Math is not brutally drill-oriented; in fact, I’d call it fairly balanced.  No flashcards, no pages with 100 problems all essentially the same.  Instead, when students are asked what 3×5 is, there’s a 3 x 5 rectangular array of stars drawn next to the problem so that the kid can see what the expression 3 x 5 actually means, not just what it evaluates to.  Similarly, kids are asked to color in 86 boxes in a 10×10 grid (the point being to learn that you can do this by filling in 8 whole columns and then 6 more.)  And with all this, there’s enough practice with basic arithmetic operations to build fluency and speed.  (Educational equity klaxon:  but of course I’ve already done a lot to teach CJ to be fluent and fast in arithmetic operations, because that’s what parents with cultural capital do.  (Subparenthetical: note that thanks to Peli Grietzer I now know the difference between cultural capital and social capital!))

Sometimes people criticize a curriculum for teaching students to do computations mindlessly, but I’m OK with that — mindlessness is a skill you need in life.  The right goal is to be able to do a computation either mindlessly or mindfully, as the situation demands.

Side question:  would Singapore Math have the cachet it does if it weren’t named for a country that’s both authoritarian and East Asian?  What if it were:

• non-authoritarian, East Asian:  Korea Math?
• non-East Asian, authoritarian:  Moscow Math?
• non-East Asian, non-authoritarian:  Israel Math?

 

 

I know “All About”…

I know “All About…”

1.  Baseball

2.  space

3.  sisters

4.  biking

5.  books

6.  math

7.  super man

8.  words

9.  food

10.  winter

11.  mysterys

12.

This is actually pretty similar to what my list would be.

Let us now praise American Airlines

Did you ever wonder what would happen if your son left the carry-on suitcase he was pulling at the bottom of the jetway before getting on the plane, because that’s what we always do in Madison, but there wasn’t actually a gate-check tag on it?

It turns out that, at least if you do this in Tucson on American, and if you have a luggage tag with your name on it, they’ll cross-reference the name against their passenger record and correctly check the bag through to your final destination.

 

 

 

I go in bars

We walked by a softball game with a keg at Vilas Park today.  Tanya asked me if I thought CJ knew what a keg was.  I said, of course CJ knows what a keg is, he lives in Wisconsin.  Tanya said, but how would he know?  So we asked him, hey, CJ, what’s that big silver thing by the softball game?  And he said, “That’s a big beer thing.”  And I said, how do you know?  And he said, “I know what a tap looks like!  I go in bars!”

 

Reader survey: do you cut, butt, or budge in line?

Waiting for the bus this morning, CJ told another kid not to budge in line.  ”You mean butt in line,” I said.  ”DADDY,” CJ said, giggling, “you are being silly.”  ”No, seriously,” I said, “it’s butt, not budge.”  So we asked the other kids in line, and all agreed — when you force your way into a line, you are “budging.”

I researched this, and indeed — “budge in line” is Wisconsin / Minnesota dialect.  (It’s also apparently common in Western Canada, for some reason.)  This was news to me.  Tanya reports hearing “ditch in line” as a kid, which is apparently some kind of Ohio thing.

So:  do you cut, butt, or budge?  And where are you from?

(Subsidiary question:  is there a poll site, a la surveymonkey, that will allow me to set this up as an online poll, ask respondents for the zip code of their home town, and then plot the answers on the map?)

Oh, drubbles

Two CJ neologisms:

• “Oh, drubbles” — this means roughly the same as “Oh, drat.”
• “Bluz, bluz, bluz” — this means something like “bla bla bla” or “yadda yadda” and is to be uttered in a world-weary tone of voice.

I actually think both of these are superior to the more standard expressions of those emotions.

Also, CJ ate five eggs and four pancakes for breakfast this morning.  Wowza.

Help me be a great Nim teacher

I’ll be at Marvelous Math Morning at CJ’s school this Saturday, playing Nim with kids ranging from K-5.  One simple goal is to teach them the winning strategy for the version of the game where there’s one pile and each player can draw 1 or 2 chips.  I’ve done that with CJ and he really liked it — and I think the idea of a perfect strategy is one of those truly deep mathematical concepts that even little kids can grasp.

But what else should I do?  What other Nims and Nimlikes should I teach these kids and what lessons should I try to impart thereby?

Update:  First two commenters both mentioned Tic-Tac-Toe.  At what age do kids typically learn how to play Tic-Tac-Toe and at what age have they learned a perfect strategy?  CJ is in kindergarten and has not seen this, or at least he hasn’t seen it from me.  I’ll ask him tonight.

Update:  Nim a success!  I played mostly one-pile, and the kids were definitely able to grasp pretty quickly the idea of winning and losing positions, and the goal of chasing the former and avoiding the latter.  I didn’t encounter anyone who’d played nim before.  I felt some math was transmitted.  Mission accomplished.