Math Fever

For the most part, the kids practice their math here and there, for short periods of time.  Their skills, while not lightning quick, are pretty competent for their level, and their depth of understanding is much better than what they would attain through drill-and-kill methods.  And every once in awhile, for some reason, one or both of them will spend large concentrated periods of time playing with math.


Last week, it was the evening after a long bird watching tour.  We came home, the kids had a warm bath, we all put on our pajamas, had dinner, and settled down to a restful evening.  Then, about an hour before bedtime, BatBoy dumped out the math box.  (Sadly, I just realized I deleted the photos before I copied them over to my computer.)

He spent some time on tangrams; SpiderGirl picked up the Rubik's Cube.  Then she found a pile of subtraction flash cards that we've had for about a year and nobody has touched at all.  She wanted me to quiz her.  When she had done all the easy ones, she had the confidence to try the more difficult ones.  By the time we had only 3 or 4 cards left, she was complaining that she didn't like them "because she had to use counters instead of just fingers."  I suggested her brain was tired and we wrap it up (by now it was past bedtime), but she persisted and finished them all.

Meanwhile, BatBoy got interested and answered his own set of easy subtraction cards.  But they didn't want to stop there.  Now, BatBoy has had some concept of integers for a couple of years.  When SpiderGirl was learning how to add and subtract small integers, BatBoy would come to me to tell me he was "negative milk."  For at least a year, he has stated with confidence when a given subtraction question had an answer of negative one or two.  This evening, BatBoy wanted to know why.

We pulled up the blackboard and drew some bunnies and some bunny holes.  Each bunny represents +1 and each hole represents -1.  What happens when you have a bunny and a bunny hole?  The hole is filled to ground-level, which equals zero.  So if we have 4 holes and 3 bunnies, 1 hole remains unfilled --> -1.  We did a couple more examples, and Batboy was pretty happy with the analogy.

THEN, SpiderGirl got into the action and drew bunnies and carrots on the other side of the board, and drew BatBoy's attention to them.  It took much of my willpower not to say, "No no no, no carrots!"  But they made some sense out of the carrots, bunnies, and holes.

Finally, off to sleep an hour late.  Why DOES math so often seem to happen right before bed?