Am I actually going to start bloggin about my surrogate kids?? I guess I am, just so I can bore the cyber ether and tie up valuable bytes of transfer.

I just had a loooooooooooooooooong conversation with Ben about why taking short cuts in Math using his computer and php coding to solve algebra is not a good thing as it is extremely unlikely that he will have a pc and a web account in his math exams to help solve the equations.. Of course this made no sense to him whatsoever. Thus we segue into a discussion on the methodology of taking exams.. which goes a little something like this :

Chris : Do you know how to take exams?

Ben : Yes, You read all the questions and then answer the easy ones and go back for the hard ones.

Chris : Do you calculate how much time you have to answer each question?

Ben : No.

Chris : Well don’t you think it would be useful to know how long you have to work on each question?

Ben : I already do that.

Chris : What do you mean?

Ben : Well I don’t calculate it I just know.

Chris : How do you just know?

Ben : Well I work it out without thinking about it.

Chris : So you do know how much time you have..

Ben : No…

(You getting the picture yet dear reader?)

Chris : Ok.. Ben you have not sat down with a calculator and worked out that you have 2.6789 seconds per question.. However you have subconciously worked out that you roughly have 3 seconds per question..

Ben : Yes

(Whew finally getting somewhere)

I swear this is like a comedy script of whos on first..

I am trying to work out what it is that drives Ben to be so very exact in his thinking.. because I want to be able to lead him to think in slightly more general terms, a little more lateral.

Telling him to clean the kitchen is not a single sentence.. its a list.
Open the dishwasher, put the dishes away, fill with dirty dishes, put soap in, switch it on.

Clean the sink

Clean the floor

Clean the stove

Clean the table

Putting garbage into an already full garbage container actually requires emptying it first..

Was I like this? I have to remember to ask my mom. I can’t have been that perfect.. surely not