I hate to interrupt this discussion, but I'm being egotistical and in the likes-carrots mode: God DAMN we're pretty.

t edit Yeah, I know I need a haircut.

You can ALWAYS interrupt for that kind of gawjus!

I fully admit there was Photoshopping. My face was all sweaty, and so I airbrushed it away. I darkened and blurred the background, but The Boy is fully un-Photoshopped. (Yes, those are his real eyes, no color contacts, no Photoshopping.)

Bwah, the expressions in that shot are priceless.

Aren't they? I giggled like a loon when I uploaded the pic.

(Yes, those are his real eyes, no color contacts, no Photoshopping.)

Oh, I totally remember his eyes just absolutely leaping out even in the dark ambiance of Porkopolis.

Yeah, those eyes are pretty damn pretty and I'm not just talking about his. You guys make a really pretty couple!

always interrupt with the pretty -- it makes us happy

You can ALWAYS interrupt for that kind of gawjus!

Steph, like Barb said, you guys are 'gawjus'!

I got really pissed off when my daughter's sixth grade math class insisted on everyone having a calculator for class. BS. If a student doesn't know how to do the math without using a calculator you're not doing them any favors.

I think that calculators, when used properly, can be a great teaching tool. There are lots of things that can take forever to do without a calculator, and the point gets lost in the details, while it can be made really clear if you do it with a calculator. Most of the examples I can think of are for middle school and higher math, but that's mostly because that's the level that I've taught most.

I especially like graphing calculators for being able to play with functions. They make it so much easier to do things like show the relationship between the roots of an equation and the zeros of a graph, or how the graph of a function and the graph of its derivative relate.

OK, a quick google found me an example of what looks like a pretty good calculator lesson for younger kids: show them how if you press, say, 1+2=, you'll get 3, and then if you keep pressing =, it'll keep adding 2 to each subsequent answer. Give them a few different examples to try, and let them try some of their own. They can observe a bunch of different patterns: if you start with an odd number and keep adding an even one, the answer will keep being odd, but if you start with an even number, the answer will keep being even; if you keep adding an odd number, the answer will alternate between odd and even; if you start with a 1-digit number and keep adding 10, then every answer will have that same 1-digit number as the last digit; etc. It seems like a good intro to thinking about the ideas of multiplication before they start learning all the multiplication tables.