The Way They Should Go

Well, last Wednesday we are doing schoolwork.  No big shocker.  Working away.  After 4-year-old finishes her math work (Math-U-See Primer), which she zips through, I have a Math-at-home book from Walmart that she picks and chooses pages out of to work on. 

Let me inject an important detail.  This child LOVES to do worksheets.  I have to keep an eye and throw in instructions now and then because she’ll just whip through pages doing whatever she thinks should be done.

 Anyway, I turn the page of the wal-mart book and the next page is subtraction word problems - the first answer is Zero.  This child has never done word problems (directly as math anyway), dealt with subtraction, or the concept of Zero, execept on the numberline we use as reference. 

The punchline?  What the heck, I read “Mike had 4 beetles in a jar.  The lid came off and 4 beetle got out.  How many beetles were left in the jar?”  No hesitation and she throws both arms up announcing, “Zero!”

LOL.  What a hoot.  There you go, no problem.  She seems to have no problem with subtraction.

Later we were at Target, getting lunch in the little cafe.  We get our food, sit at a little table.  KTRose pipes up with “there are 4 seats at our table, but only 3 people.”  Yep, I say.  That’s true.  Eat your pizza.

Then, she pauses a moment and starts, “If the table has 4 seats…”  Ok.  There were some hesitations, stumbling over the way to say it, but in the end after editing what she said was, “If the table has 4 seats and 3 people are sitting at the table, how many more people need to sit at the table to take all the seats?”  And she proudly announced the right answer.

I was just very amused at her making up math word problems spontaneously over her personal pan pizza.  :-)  Makes me think we may actually be creating a learning lifestyle for her! 

Yay!! It really is worth it even if I think I may go insane some days!  Hehe.