Here are a couple of things we’re going to be working on that I think will be a help to Antonia’s literacy in the long-term.<\/p>\n
Greek letters<\/strong>.\u00a0 They’re used in a lot of mathematical and scientific contexts, they’re easy and fun to learn when you’re young, and if you don’t learn them you will one day finding yourself reading passages like: “(shape<\/em>) over d (unknown symbol<\/em>) (other shape<\/em>) equals the ultimate answer; where (shape<\/em>) is the Infinity Constant\u00a0 and (other shape<\/em>) is the hypotenuse of the space-time continuum”. \u00a0 In other words, you will have enough problems to be going on with, without having to keep shape <\/em>and other shape<\/em> straight in your mind.<\/p>\n I found the Open University’s set of applets<\/a> for learning the Greek letters to be very nice and efficient.\u00a0 The one on trying to put together Greek words at the end is just a bonus for our current purposes.<\/p>\n Roman numerals<\/strong>. \u00a0 These might be a mere curiosity in some cultures.\u00a0 True, they often appear decoratively on clocks, but in the end, most of us go by position, rather than reading the numbers.\u00a0 In France though, it’s customary to express the centuries in Roman numerals.\u00a0 ‘XVIIeme siecle’ is the 17th Century and so on.\u00a0 That’s a nice little addition to the already pressing need to keep straight the idea that the17th Century belongs with the 1600s.\u00a0 Antonia has nearly reached the age where she will find it helpful to have instant recognition of all the numerals up to XXI.<\/p>\n I was surprised that I couldn’t find any nice applets for teaching kids the Roman numerals from scratch so I’m resorting to good old-fashioned flashcards.\u00a0 The first 8 have the individual numerals I, V, X, L, C, D and M.\u00a0 The next set have I to XXI with the range of years corresponding to the century on the back.\u00a0 The last set are more individual numerals for building numbers with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are a couple of things we’re going to be working on that I think will be a help to Antonia’s literacy in the long-term. Greek letters.\u00a0 They’re used in a lot of mathematical and scientific contexts, they’re easy and fun to learn when you’re young, and if you don’t learn them you will one … Continue reading Small advances in literacy<\/span>