Sniffle snuffle cough

Charizard had an extra-short homeschooling day today because Jigglepuff is pretty poorly, and Chuggington was poorly too and off school.

We sat at the kitchen table and took a piece of paper. "Right," said Jigglepuff fervently, with all the determination of a homeschooling mum who knows that in twenty minutes she will probably need to go back to bed, "this is two lessons in one, history and maths." We looked at the difference between doubles (2 x 2, 3 x 4, 4 x 2) and squared numbers (2 x 2, 3 x 3, 4 x 4). Then we added in cubed numbers, (3 x 3 x 3 etc). "Got it?" Jigglepuff said. Charizard had. "Right, now those are the times tables you would have learnt in Ancient Babylon, you had to learn your squared and cubed tables all the way up to 59, because it was base 60 not base 10." Charizard and Jigglepuff agreed this would have been much harder. Then we drew a circle, and minutes in the hour, and worked out how the number of degrees in a circle and the number of minutes in an hour was also base 60, and how this came from the Babylonian era. "Cool," said Charizard.
"And this is why we're doing Babylon," said Jigglepuff faintly, "you were asking yesterday, it is the beginning of written maths and the beginning of writing, and also, oh goodness I have to go back to bed."