It was house cleaning time and everyone was involved in one capacity or another. Whilst it is great to have kids join in cleaning; many times the bulk of what they offer is their presence and not really any concrete support. That being said, embracing their proposal to help is still necessary for their upbringing.

Anyways, so two of my little ones, Richard and Claire found a photocopied text book belonging to the younger of the two. They both began to redo the exercises in the text; looks like they were having lots of fun at it. Sincerely, it was a relief to have them busy enough to afford me more time to get my chores over with.

I was engrossed with a task when I overheard them arguing about the correct answer to a specific question asked in the textbook they were studying. There was a diagram of a circle drawn. The circle was divided into various sections; each section supposedly had a different colour.  Students were asked to identify the different colours in the circle and choose the best answer among a range of possible options.

 

Richard was quick to choose an answer from the options but Claire insisted that all of the answers provided were incorrect. I decided to come in as an umpire. I asked each one of them why they felt their own answer was correct. Richard said he chose option A because many of the drawings he had seen often had the colours: blue, red and yellow which happen to be primary colours. Claire refuted Richard’s claim; arguing that there was no answer to the question, because the book was a black and white photocopy which meant that the ball was not coloured to begin with. I forgot my role as referee for a bit and just stared at them in amazement. I must have let out a really cheesy smile because my daughter gave me an aloof look. Lol. Guess that was what I needed to get back to addressing the situation at hand.

First, I tried to explain to them that neither of them was entirely right or wrong since they both approached the question from very different perspectives. Not sure they understood a word I said, but they both nodded. Lol.

Second, I applauded them both for applying reason to solving the question. Richard got a fist bump for drawing from his experience to attempt to answer the question. Claire on the other hand got a ‘scissors hand-shake’ (one of the few peculiar styles of greeting we’ve adopted in our home), for realizing that the answer was seemingly not there because the text in question was a black and white copy; which meant that the answer would have been readily recognizable in the original coloured print.

About my spring cleaning that day? Let us just say that it took longer than it should have.

 

 

Photo Credit: Google Images