There comes a time in every parent’s life when they become humbled by their child’s schoolwork. Sooner or later, you’re forced to come to grips with the fact that in a battle of wits — your child has you largely outmatched.
The only thing you can do in these situations is to reach out and ask for help . Luckily, the internet was able to come to the aid of this confused mother who needed help with her son’s homework assignment.
Are you smarter than a 5-year-old?
Before you answer “yes,” taken a moment to think it through. Sure, adults certainly have more life experience; we’ve all had to learn things the hard way on more than one occasion. But when talking brass tax — how does our brainpower measure up?
Recently, a mother of a five-year-old primary school student was left scratching her head after she tried in vain to help her son solve what proved to be a very confusing English assignment.
“Help! I either can’t do my sons year 1 homework or the question/pictures are not right,” the mother pleaded.
“I am hoping it’s just wrong and I’m not losing my mind,” she explained in the Family Lowdown Tips & Ideas Facebook group.
The assignment in question asked the students to correctly match the word with the pictures on the page — using the “oo” sound. The only problem was that none of the pictures shown appeared to have an “oo” sound.
Beneath the question, the four images were: a king, a swing set, what appears to be a weightlifter, and finally two pencils.
If you’re left scratching your head, trust me — you aren’t the only one. The mother’s question had the entire Facebook group stumped. unable to come up with the correct answer.
One fellow Facebook user who works as an educator with Year 1 students said, “I work with year 1’s and u[sic] can’t even think what they are lol.”
Another desperate parent commented “”Pls let us know when you find out, this is going to haunt me all day.”
Was the answer incredibly difficult or too easy to be able to see? The answer lay somewhere in the middle. After many tried in vain to come up with the solution, a few select parents pointed out an error in the phrasing of the question.
“Think misprint ,” one sharp-minded parent concluded. “Meant to be ng.” Shortly thereafter, other parents began echoing the same statement.
If you switch out the “oo” for “ng,” suddenly the question makes a lot more sense.
The correct answers with a “ng” sound would be king, swing, strong, and long.
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“So I think we have come to the conclusion the pictures are wrong as they relate to the ‘ng’ sound when they should be the ‘oo’ sound,” the mother finally came to realize. “I’m not going crazy,” she happily proclaimed.
But even though the riddle was solved, that didn’t stop people from trying to solve the problem using the “oo” sound.
“I thought it was king, swing, weight lifter and pencils,” one parent admitted.
Another like-minded parent thought that the answer was ” Rooler , woo-hoo, sooper strong and doodler.” It’s too bad that the kids don’t get marks for creativity because if they did — that answer would outshine them all.
“Just add a oo to each one for fun,” one parent suggested. “Koong. Swoong stroong long.” What I wouldn’t give to be fly on the wall and to hear those answers read-aloud for the whole class!
All jokes aside, there were still a select group of super serious parents who didn’t find the assignment funny at all.
“So a fair few adults completely confused how on Earth is a 5 year old[sic] supposed to do this,” one parent asked in earnest. “Even if it is ‘ng’ sound the ‘strong’ woman is pretty ambiguous and can’t see where pencil fits in at all?”
One eagle-eyed user also pointed out that “It doesn’t say all words have the oo sound. Just match the ones that do. So it’s wood under pencil.”
How would you solve the problem? Leave a comment and let us know!
