I thought tutoring Challenge A this year was going to be easy because I’ve done it so many times. I remember the ol days when students circled typos in It couldn’t just happen, backline maps were in the back of the guide and the math map wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye.

Then I got a corneal ulcer from some sort of death ray staph/mrsa which in my imagination looks like the eye of Sauron erupting on the top left side of my left iris. It’s not only taken out a good bit of my vision, but it also makes my eye spasm like I’m on some sort of hellish carnival ride with strobe lights. All of my dreams for a smooth school start have come crashing down, but in some ways it’s good, the kids are all pitching in and my 3rd born may turn out to be my most independent Challenge A kid yet.

Of course if I could have chosen a year to have this happen, I wouldn’t have chosen The-Year-Of-The-Math-Map to be a director, but here we are. Our class is slowly sampling and nibbling at this advanced math feast, and I think good conversations and connections are being made. But holy wow, I cannot handle the math notation flashcards. I don’t know if it’s because I’m half blind, or it’s my ADHD or what, but my brain cannot handle the double-sided flashcards with the definition matching the opposite side. I look at it over and over, confusing myself even more and more.

In a fit of internal angst…over so many things, I made Grumpy Cat Math Notation flashcards. Since Math symbols can have a variety of definitions, I put the main on in the speech bubble, and all the extra information in Grumpy Cat’s thought bubble. First tour students can work on the speech bubble level, and more advanced folk can memorize the extra information.

Since It really is quite difficult to see (especially a computer screen…this blog entry is being typed with my eyes closed and shoutout to Grammarly), I only have the first 4 weeks done (15 pages total, so if you do one page a week you should have them memorized by Christmas and can start over and review in the 2nd Semester).

That said, here they are! Enjoy.

If you’d like an update when I have the rest of them done, you can give me your email here and I’ll let you know when they’re all up.

P.S. If you aren’t in Classical Conversations and have no clue what I’m talking about, thank your lucky stars. Although if you think it sounds fun to teach your child the definition of a radix point or the Greek phi (not to be confused with pi), then by all means feel free to include them in on the fun. Math is for everyone! We’re in our math era.

Printing tips: Print black and white and save ink and toner if you’re printing on thin paper otherwise you can kind of see the answers. Select “double sided” or “print on both sides” and then select “head to head” or “flip on long edge”. Make sure the orientation is set to “portrait” and hit print!

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