Progress by Degrees

Today we had a great day! Baby No.1 and I sat down with "What your 5th Grader Should Know", and turned to the History and Geography Section. I decided we'd discuss reference points on maps and atlases, including latitude and longitude and which was which and how to remember that. We talked about how these points are measured in degrees, and we use degrees to measure temperature and angles, too. Latitude always comes first, and is like a waistband around the earth, you measure it north and south of that waistband. Longitude comes next, and you can remember it easily as running around the earth north to south (Long-itude; like hair is long and it runs downwards). Then we located different areas on the globe by navigating to them using their Lat-Long co-ordinates. This seems to have taken an easy hold in her mind, and we then went and got a street atlas to test if she remembered how to find the street we were staying in. She located several more streets easily.

Baby No.2 had obviously been listening in, unnoticed by us at the time, and now knows latitude and longitude too, and which comes first. Sometimes simple little associations can make such a difference to learning (they did for me, anyway).

Then it was on to the maths lesson for the day, and by some coincidence it was about degrees and temperature. She wizzed through it without effort and was very pleased with herself. She sometimes makes easy mistakes when she's feeling confident and as a result not paying 100% attention, but we managed to correct one mistake without fuss.