Yes! Miss Abby is helping the other children with their math by going to the board and explaining how we get the answer right! Indifference and knowledge are two very different things. Perhaps numbers are not important to her.
Numbers became very important to my son when he flunked algebra as a freshman. It was at that point that he realized it was a matter of being in the race or out of it. I bought him a $2.00 desk at an auction - a big thing that would seat eight so he would have a real place to do what he wanted to do - that's a mother's job - to provide a place, and a time and the enthusiasm surrounding the deed - and he went to work learning all about math on his own. His problems are still on the desk. I flipped the top and keep the precious work as a memory. He now has a degree in math and does quantum mechanics for fun on the way home from work for fun. "I don't deal in real numbers, Mom," he has been known to say. That's for sure.
Personally, I couldn't care less about numbers. I took algebra, geometry, integrated algebra and trig, did a little calculus and touched on statistics in college, but I was more of a guest in the classroom than a participant. I was polite, I held the door, and my tests were neat. I even put my name on them.
In my adult life, give me a budget parameter and I will stay within my limits because I believe in fair play. If someone else is going to do the numbers, I'll play fair. But everyone uses simple arithmetic every day, and we need to have some concept of what numbers are and how they can be used.
If you are a baker like I am, you need to know the difference between a teaspoon of baking powder and a tablespoon. If you need to know how many feet there are in the room by eye, you better be able to come close. If a recipe for pancakes is one thing, you better be able to quadruple it without the baking powder exploding. You need to understand why double bed sheets only go on one way and king both ways. You need to understand temperature degrees and whether you're going to kill something if you put it out too soon. You need to know how many cans of cat food you need a day and be able to multiply that by seven and then cross reference the weight to know whether your car load will manage to carry it, and how many miles your car gets to the gallon - or in my case gallons to the mile.
If you're at the store and the cash register is broken, it's one thing to be able to console the young girl behind the counter, but it's another to be able to do the change making. "Just count up." "Up from what?" "From the price plus the tax to the ten dollar bill." "Huh?" And I thought my math skills were poor.
Teaching math to 4-5s is fun because they discover. Now here's the picture: There's this pernicious little chart in a soft blue and yellow that is taped onto the blackboard. The children brilliantly ignore it. "What's that?" Avoidance is a passion they are adept at. No one answers. "Here's a copy of it," and I put a paper in front of each child. "These are the numbers from 1 to 100. There are rows and columns. Let's understand the terminology: a row goes across like this, and the columns go up and down like this. Now put your finger on the ten," and so goes the lesson.
We will continue to explain that each row contains ten numbers that relate to one another by a similar tens count. Each ROW has the same number of tens - 21,22,23,24 - each have two tens and a certain number of ones.
In a column the last number is the same: 6, 16, 26, 36, 46. So finding a number is easy if you know that you need to find the tens and the ones. 36 - find it. Either go to the six column and count down, ones, tens, twenties, thirties bingo. Or go to the left side and count ones, tens, twenties thirties and then find the six. This is a matter of following a scheme or a formula. Kids will be using simple and complex formulas all their lives.
My goal is to allow this age child to discover fewer and more, what "how many" really is, ones and tens and why, and a sense of what a ten based number system is all about. Writing numbers is a matter of development just like handwriting. Bingo was never more complicated.
And who gets all these concepts? Abby. Now if I could get her to understand the baking powder, she could make the pancake batter...
The picture is a house on the battlefield of Gettysburg. I love the stone work. Can you imagine the math!
1 comment:
She is a really intelligent little gal. I have only recently seen her have any interest in numbers. When we would go over them at home she just wouldn't get the teens and twenties but could tell you any other number. She is doing much better now. She has caught on to adding rather quickly also. I am very proud of her!!!! The outstanding teaching she gets at school along with working with her at home really helps!!
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