You Know, Those Skin-Coloured Things With The Cracks

Dylan (6) has found a new love for math worksheets. With him being a boy, loving to move, I had spent a great deal of effort to do math in 'real' ways with him. I didn't want pages and pages of laborious writing to bog him down.

We played games, we used 30-sided dice, we used counting bears, coloured tiles, an abacus, dominoes, measurements, a math scale...you know, the fun stuff.

One day he saw a math worksheet somewhere. I didn't think anything of it - I mean, how exciting could that be after all the 'real-life' math we'd been doing. Very, apparently. He's hooked. Can't get enough math worksheets! So much for me rescuing him from the drudgery.

With the math worksheets, I gave Dylan his abacus and his counting bears. At first he used them but then he decided that it was much easier to do it in his head.

I watched him do 8 + 9. He had a look of concentration on his face and then wrote down 17.

Me: "How did you do that in your head?"

Dylan: "Well, there are these skin-coloured balls with cracks in them and red-hot lava coming out. I see them in my brain and then count them."

Me: "Why are they skin-coloured balls?"

Dylan: "I don't know. That's just how they are." Duh.

A couple of equations later...

Dylan: "And you know what else?"

Me: "What?"

Dylan: "I noticed something strange. When you add 10 plus another number all you have to do is write a 1 and then the other number. That's strange. Those are the easiest ones in the world, except for 0 + 0."

Oh, I want to just crawl right into his brain so I can see exactly what he sees. It fascinates me.