I *will* get round to a best of Florida blog soon - really!

But for now I need to blog how Merry has saved us from impending maths doom and the murder of Charlie by me in a maths related incident!

Charlie HATES maths - this is a well known fact and one, quite frankly that I can fully appreciate and understand. I grew so sick of the day long tantrums over doing 1 sodding page of a maths workbook that I was close to murder. It even caused ridiculous arguments between B and I over whether he should be allowed to use a calculator.

Then we went to stay at Merry's the day after one of the worst tantrums yet ( he's NINE for gods sake not 3 or 4!!!) and the voice of reason suggested leaving work books for a couple of years totally, and trying education city. I'd looked at and started a few trial with EC late last year and he wasn't that impressed. I wasn't convinced totally.

On Friday I cleared his pc of a load of crap and logged into EC. 3.5 hours later he was still on there and had done around 6 maths games. He did more at the weekend and today spent about 4 hours on there and did another 6 maths games. I've rolled him back to year 1 just for maths and he is really enjoying it. He even volunteered to finish the workbook page he had the tantrum over on Tuesday.

No more ripped workbooks, no more tantrums, no more tears and no more utter devastation and feeling stupid because he just doesn't "get" maths.

Thank you Merry for your words of wisdom.